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THE   ASSURANCE   OF 
IMMORTALITY 


•*&&& 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  ASSURANCE  OF 
IMMORTALITY 


BY 

HARRY   EMERSON   FOSDICK 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1913 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1913, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1913. 


Nortoooo  $«ea 

J.  8.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  <fc  Sinith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass,,  U.S.A. 


Enscrtfcetr 

WITH   AFFECTION    AND    GRATITUDE 

TO    THE    CONGREGATION 

OF    THE    FIRST    BAPTIST    CHURCH 

MONTCLAIR,  NEW  JERSEY 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Significance  of  Immortality  ...  3 
The  Possibility  of  Immortality  ...  50 
The  Assurance  of  Immortality      ...      94 


"  If  this  life  be  not  a  real  fight,  in  which  something  is 
eternally  gained  for  the  universe  by  success,  it  is  no  better 
than  a  game  of  private  theatricals  from  which  one  may  with- 
draw at  will.     But  it  feels  like  a  real  fight." 

—  William  James. 


PREFACE 

In  publishing  this  essay  upon  immortal- 
ity, it  is  useless,  and  in  most  cases  impossible, 
for  me  to  indicate  in  detail  my  indebtedness 
for  the  lines  of  thought  which  here  are  inter- 
woven. The  general  considerations  which 
support  faith  in  everlasting  life  have  been 
canvassed  so  often  that  extensive  originality 
in  arguing  for  immortality  is  out  of  the 
question.  Whatever  freshness  of  thought 
this  essay  may  possess  will  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  the  problem  of  life  after  death  is 
viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  twentieth 
century  and  is  discussed  in  terms  of  the 
special  difficulties  and  the  prevailing  atti- 
tudes which  exist  to-day.  Old  arguments 
must  take  new  direction  from  the  banks  of 
the  generation's  thought  between  which  they 
flow.  In  particular  I  have  had  in  mind  the 
man,  conscientious  about  his  daily  work, 
with  whom  the  words  honor  and  friendship, 
fidelity  and  courage,  weigh  heavily,  but  who, 
occasionally  lifting  his  thought  to  the  prob- 


x  PREFACE 

lem  of  life  everlasting,  speedily  turns  away, 
saying:  "What  difference  does  it  make? 
At  least  I  can  do  my  present  task  well,  and 
if  there  be  any  world  beyond  the  grave,  I 
will  face  it,  when  it  comes."  This  prevalent 
attitude  is  often  maintained  in  admirable 
spirit  and  is  accompanied  by  an  honorable 
and  useful  life.  But  there  are  considera- 
tions which  such  an  attitude  leaves  out  of 
account,  and  to  these  the  attention  of  this 
essay  is  specially  directed. 

The  reader  will  find  the  understanding  of 
the  argument  easier  if  he  keeps  in  mind  the 
general  outline  of  the  thought.  In  the  first 
chapter,  I  try  simply  to  point  out  the  real 
and  present  importance  of  the  problem  which 
we  are  considering ;  in  the  second  chapter, 
I  try  to  show  the  inconclusive  nature  of  the 
arguments  commonly  urged  against  a  future 
life ;  and  in  the  third  chapter,  I  try  to  pre- 
sent the  positive  reasons  for  a  modern  man's 
assurance  that  death  does  not  end  all. 

HARRY  EMERSON  FOSDICK. 
August  6,  1913. 


THE 
ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 


CHAPTER   I 
The  Significance  of  Immortality 


One  of  the  most  noticeable  contrasts 
between  this  generation  and  those  imme- 
diately preceding  it,  is  the  relative  unim- 
portance of  the  future  life  in  the  thought 
of  the  present  age.  When  our  forefathers 
were  at  all  religious,  and  often  when  they 
were  not,  they  not  only  took  for  granted 
the  fact  of  continued  existence  beyond 
the  grave,  but  they  regarded  it  as  a  matter 
of  supreme  concern.  When  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century  Butler  constructed  his  im- 
pressive argument  for  revealed  religion, 
he  used  the  soul's  deathlessness,  not  as  a 
conclusion  to  be  established,  but  as  a 
premise  to  be  assumed.  Even  with  rad- 
ical thinkers  outside  the  churches,  faith 
in  the  future  life  could  then  be  presupposed 
as  a  common  point  of  agreement,  while 
within  the  churches  men's  hopes  and  fears 

3 


4  ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

of  immortality  dominated  their  religious 
thought,  and  made  this  present  life  signifi- 
cant largely  because  it  was  preparatory  to 
the  glories  or  the  terrors  of  the  life  to  come. 
Our  fathers,  therefore,  hardly  could  have 
understood  the  present  generation's  scep- 
ticism about  the  truth  of  immortality ; 
much  less  could  they  have  comprehended 
that  modern  nonchalance  which  speaks 
and  acts  as  though  it  made  but  little  dif- 
ference whether  or  not  men  live  beyond 
the  grave.  A  recent  writer  tells  us  that 
in  our  unwillingness  to  die  and  have  that 
the  end  of  us,  "We  have  not  passed  far 
beyond  the  attitude  of  peevish  children 
who  refuse  to  come  in  at  nightfall  after 
they  have  played  outdoors  all  day."  This 
cavalier  belittling  of  the  significance  of 
life  to  come  is  prevalent  to-day  even  among 
religious  men.  They  do  not  so  much  dis- 
believe in  immortality ;  their  scepticism 
lies  deeper ;  they  do  not  care.  With  some 
such  phrase  as  "One  world  at  a  time," 
they  commonly  dismiss  consideration  of 
the  future  life,  regarding  immortality  as 
indeed  a  possibility,  but  a  possibility  whose 
import   is  postponed  until   they  die.     To 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY     5 

insist,  therefore,  that  the  persistence  of 
personality  beyond  the  grave  involves  tre- 
mendous issues  for  our  present  life,  is  to- 
day not  by  any  means  superfluous.     . 

The  reasons  for  this  decline  of  emphasis 
upon  the  importance  of  the  world  to  come 
are  easily  discernible.  For  one  thing,  the 
impact  of  new  scientific  information  con- 
cerning the  evolutionary  origin  of  man  and 
the  intricate  relationship  between  the  mind 
and  brain  has  shattered  confidence  in  the 
certainty  of  life  to  come.  The  manifold 
causes  which  in  our  day  have  unsettled 
old  religious  beliefs,  and  have  cast  doubt 
upon  or  utterly  discredited  supposed  bases 
of  faith  that  had  gone  unquestioned  for 
two  thousand  years,  have  made  unstable 
the  hopes  of  immortality.  With  that  ad- 
mirable power  of  adaptation,  therefore, 
which  is  one  of  the  noblest  elements  in 
human  character,  men,  finding  their  con- 
fidence in  a  future  life  vanishing,  have  set 
themselves  to  make  the  best  of  the  new 
situation,  and  have  stoutly  asserted  that 
the  change  makes  little  difference.  Even 
a  Robinson  Crusoe  looks  for  compensations 
in   his   condition,    when   he   finds   himself 


6  ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

upon  a  solitary  island,  and  men,  at  their 
best,  believing  that  this  life  is  all  they  have, 
will  resolutely  make  the  most  of  that,  and 
as  an  armor  against  the  malice  of  their 
fate,  will  courageously  affirm  that  they  do 
not  care,  that  one  life  is  enough,  and  that 
the  difference  is  inconsiderable  after  all. 
In  addition  to  this  initial  cause  for  the 
decline  of  emphasis  upon  the  importance 
of  immortality,  is  an  even  nobler  reason. 
Men  have  gathered  new  hopes  of  racial 
progress  in  our  day,  and,  at  their  best, 
are  increasingly  inclined  to  sink  their  indi- 
vidual prospects  in  their  expectations  for 
humanity.  The  social  passion  finds  voice 
in  pulpits  as  well  as  on  secular  platforms, 
and  proclaims  there  what  our  fathers  would 
not  have  thought  of  saying,  that  our  mission 
is  not  to  get  men  into  heaven,  but  somehow 
to  bring  heaven  to  earth.  What  Narodny 
said  of  Russia,  "I  am  nothing;  personal 
success,  happiness,  they  are  nothing ;  exile, 
Siberia,  the  Czar's  bullet,  they  are  nothing ; 
there  is  just  one  thing,  that  Russia  must  be 
free,"  men  in  a  larger  sense  are  saying  of 
the  human  race.  Hope  of  a  future  life, 
with   its   rewards   and   possibilities,   has   a 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY     7 

mean  look  in  the  light  of  such  self-forgetful 
passion,  and  as  new  discoveries  open  new 
hopes  of  progress  for  mankind,  one  hears 
scores  of  men  wish  that  they  could  see 
America  a  hundred  years  from  now,  for 
one  man  who,  after  the  old  fashion,  longs  for 
heaven.  What  difference  does  it  make 
whether  another  life  awaits  us  after  death, 
so  long  as  here  we  play  our  part  like  men, 
and  hand  down  the  heritage  of  the  past, 
so  purified  and  furthered  by  our  thought 
and  sacrifice  that  our  children  will  rise 
up  to  call  us  blessed  ? 

Another  reason  for  the  decline  of  emphasis 
upon  the  importance  of  the  life  to  come  is 
not  so  creditable  as  the  other  two.  In  the 
present  age,  this  life  has  been  made  vivid 
and  interesting  in  an  unexampled  way. 
Old  isolations  have  been  overcome,  so  that 
the  whole  world  is  now  the  province  of  any 
mind  that  chooses  to  be  cosmopolitan, 
and  rapidity  of  communication  has  made 
possible  world-wide  enterprises  on  such  a 
scale  as  no  previous  age  has  ever  known. 
New  knowledge  has  consumed  the  thoughts 
of  men,  and  new  avenues  of  wealth  have 
engaged  their  ambitions,  until  the  contem- 


8  ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

plation  of  eternal  destiny  has  paled  before 
the  immediate  brilliance  of  this  present 
world.  For  men  are  like  auditoriums ; 
they  can  hold  so  many  occupants  and  no 
more ;  and  when  the  seats  are  filled  and 
even  the  "Standing  Room  Only"  sign 
has  been  removed,  the  next  comer,  though 
he  be  a  prince,  must  cool  his  heels  upon  the 
curb.  The  minds  of  men  have  been  pre- 
empted by  the  immediate  and  fascinating 
interests  of  this  vigorous,  exciting  age. 
The  fact  is  not  so  much  that  they  through 
reasoned  disbelief  have  discarded  faith  in 
immortality,  as  that  through  preoccupation 
they  have  lost  interest  in  anything  beyond 
the  grave. 

Even  a  deeper  reason,  in  the  realm  of 
serious  thought,  helps  to  explain  the  modern 
depreciation  of  immortality.  Eternal  life 
is  a  matter  of  quality  and  not  of  time,  men 
say.  Justice  and  goodness,  beauty  and 
truth  exist  eternally  in  God  and  may  be 
incarnate  in  our  transient  human  lives. 
Let  the  individual  die ;  the  value  of  his 
spiritual  quality,  which  alone  is  worth  pre- 
serving, is  perpetuated  in  the  life  of  God. 
From  God  came  all  the  worth  of  our  charac- 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    o 

ters,  to  him  it  shall  return  and  in  him  it 
shall  never  die.  Not  in  our  small  individ- 
ualities, but  in  his  persistent  Being, 

"  All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good 
shall  exist." 

The  only  Eternal  is  God ;  of  him  we  are 
but  broken  lights  ;  and  our  nickering  lives, 
luminous  with  his  quality,  may  be  eternal 
in  this  sense  only,  that  we  can  mean  what 
he  means,  we  can  incarnate  in  time  the 
spiritual  values  that  in  him  are  absolute 
and  timeless.  Must  every  little  candle 
burn  forever,  that  so  light  may  persist  ? 
Must  each  separate  breeze  be  perpetual 
in  order  that  the  air  may  still  enswathe 
the  earth  ?  Shall  the  special  waves  insist 
on  perpetuity  when  they  but  represent  the 
ocean  that  abides  behind  them,  and  in 
them  and  millions  like  them  is  expressed  ? 
These  are  four  outstanding  reasons  for 
the  modern  doubt,  not  only  of  the  fact,  but 
of  the  importance  of  personal  immortality. 
There  are  other  reasons,  operative  in  all 
generations  —  the  pessimistic  mood  that 
does  not  want  to  live  again,  the  worldling's 
hatred  of  the  hopes  and  fears  that  would 
deprive  him  of  comfort  in  self-indulgence  — 


10        ASSURANCE   OF    IMMORTALITY 

but  these  four  causes,  not  by  any  means 
dishonorable,  lead  even  the  best  of  men 
to-day  to  wonder  how  much  difference  it 
makes  whether  belief  in  immortality  be 
accepted  or  denied. 

To  be  sure,  one  value  for  our  present  life 
which  faith  in  immortality  possesses  is 
evident  to  all.  It  comforts  men  in  the  hour 
when  bereavement  comes,  when  human 
hearts  discover  that  by  as  much  as  love 
is  great,  by  so  much  must  grief  be  deep. 
But  men  are  not  assured  that  they  have  any 
right  to  expect  comfort  from  the  universe. 
They  do  not  propose  to  find  solace  in  a  lie. 
They  do  not  want  the  opium  of  a  dream  to 
ease  them  of  their  heart's  distress.  If  the 
only  value  for  life  which  faith  in  immortality 
possesses  is  the  value  of  comfort,  folk  for 
that  very  reason  will  mistrust  their  right  to 
it,  will  fear  lest  their  desire  for  consolation 
may  drive  them  to  seek  it  in  a  hope  that  is 
not  true.  Even  though  a  man  has  cried 
with  Tennyson : 

"Ah,  Christ !  if  it  were  possible 
For  one  short  hour  to  see 
The  souls  we  loved,  that  they  might  tell  us 
Where  and  what  they  be," 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    n 

he  has  not  drawn  appreciably  nearer  to 
confidence  about  the  future,  nor  has  he 
even  dimly  seen  the  deepest  issues  which 
are  implied  in  the  acceptance  or  denial  of 
immortality. 

II 

The  directest  way  by  which  we  may 
perceive  what  difference  to  life  is  made 
when  we  believe  or  disbelieve  in  the  con- 
tinuance of  personality  beyond  the  grave, 
is  to  give  free  range  to  all  our  doubts  and 
let  them  carry  us  into  a  frank  and  full  denial 
of  everlasting  life.  The  affirmation  that 
death  ends  all  is  a  creed  as  clearly  as  is  the 
assertion  of  immortality.  Let  that  creed 
be  asserted,  and  let  all  the  implications  of 
annihilation  be  followed  to  their  logical 
results.  In  what  sort  of  world  do  we  then 
find  ourselves  ?  What  difference  to  life 
does  that  assertion  make  ? 

However  superficial  his  first  impression 
may  prove  to  be,  the  ordinary  man  who, 
after  believing  in  immortality,  now  turns 
to  consider  a  world  from  which  the  hope  of 
a  future  life  has  been  obliterated,  feels  an 
unavoidable  sense  of  injustice  to  the  race. 


i:        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

What  Professor  Palmer  of  Harvard  wrote, 
with  fine  restraint,  when  he  recorded  his 
wife's  decease,  we  instinctively  feel  about 
the  whole  prospect  of  personality's  annihila- 
tion :  "Though  no  regrets  are  proper  for 
the  manner  of  her  death,  who  can  contem- 
plate the  fact  of  it  and  not  call  the  world 
irrational,  if  out  of  deference  to  a  few  par- 
ticles of  disordered  matter  it  excludes  so 
fair  a  spirit?"  If  death  ends  personality, 
the  universe  seems  to  be  throwing  away 
with  utter  heedlessness  its  most  precious 
possessions.  Whatever  evaluations  of  the 
world  may  be  questioned,  no  one  doubts 
that  personality,  with  its  capacities  for 
thought,  for  character,  for  love  and  for 
creative  work  is  the  crown  of  all  existence. 
'Out  of  what  travail,  age-long  and  full  of 
agony,  has  personality  been  born !  By 
what  vast  struggles,  admirable  in  their 
sacrificial  heroism,  has  the  moral  life  of 
man  been  attained  and  preserved !  A 
reasonable  person  does  not  build  a  violin, 
with  infinite  labor  gathering  the  materials 
and  shaping  the  body  of  it,  until  upon  it 
he  can  play  the  compositions  of  the  mas- 
ters, and  then  in  a  whim  of  chance  caprice 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    13 

smash  it  into  bits.  Yet  just  this  the  uni- 
verse seems  to  be  doing  if  immortality  is 
false.  Longer  ages  than  our  minds  can  con- 
ceive she  has  been  at  work  upon  those 
forces  which  underlie  our  personalities,  and 
now  when  Jesus  and  Augustine  and  Luther 
and  Lincoln  are  possible,  when  at  last  a 
spiritual  man  can  be  the  residence  of  poets' 
dreams  and  martyrs'  consecrations,  when 
the  mind  can  think  truth  and  the  heart 
can  love  righteousness,  are  these  supreme 
triumphs  of  the  age-long,  universal  toil 
thrown  utterly  to  ruin  ? 

Before  a  man,  however,  surrenders  him- 
self to  this  instinctive  revolt  against  the 
unreasonableness  and  injustice  of  a  world 
that  creates  personality  only  to  destroy 
it,  he  must  face  the  mitigating  considera- 
tions which  have  been  suggested,  the  alter- 
natives to  personal  immortality  which  have 
displaced  in  many  minds  the  hope  of 
individual  continuance.  Many  take  refuge 
from  the  malice  of  an  obliterated  life  in  the 
hope,  already  mentioned,  that  the  worth  of 
personality,  in  terms  of  its  goodness,  its 
justice  and  its  love,  is  made  perpetual  in 
the  life  of   God.     What  we  lay  down,  he 


i4        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

gathers  up  and  makes  eternal,  and  so  the 
spiritual  gains  of  our  human  struggle  are 
perpetuated  even  though  human  individ- 
uals do  not  persist.  But  just  what 
does  this  mean  ?  It  is  easy  to  speak  of 
justice  as  a  quality  in  God,  of  which  we 
may  be  the  temporary  representatives  and 
the  value  of  which  we,  dying,  may  know 
to  be  perpetual  in  him,  but  does  not  this 
in  the  face  of  searching  thought  turn  out 
to  be  merely  a  form  of  words  ?  Justice 
cannot  exist  in  a  solitary  being  whether  he 
be  God  or  man ;  justice  is  a  quality  impos- 
sible except  in  social  relationships  ;  and  God 
himself  cannot  be  just  without  being  just 
to  some  one.  So,  all  the  moral  values 
that  we  know,  truth,  goodness,  love,  are 
forms  of  personal  activity  that  never  would 
have  existed  without  social  life,  and  that 
have  no  meaning  whatsoever  apart  from 
relationships  between  persons.  To  imag- 
ine God,  therefore,  in  some  sublime  and 
timeless  solitude  after  the  race  is  gone, 
hoarding  within  himself  the  values  of  the 
justice,  truth  and  goodness,  which  have 
been  wrought  out  in  the  experience  of  the 
race,  is  to  conceive  an  absurdity.     When 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    15 

this  earth  has  come  to  its  inevitable  dis- 
solution and  the  persons  who  lived  upon  it 
have  vanished  utterly,  will  God  indeed  pre- 
serve within  himself  the  spiritual  gains  of 
our  human  struggles,  just  without  being 
just  to  any  one,  true  yet  true  to  no  one, 
perpetuating  all  our  love,  yet  loving  no 
person  save  himself  ?  Then  the  justice, 
truth  and  love  which  are  eternal  in  God 
have  no  imaginable  likeness  to  the  quali- 
ties which  we  mean  by  the  words.  The 
moral  gains  of  the  race  are  all  social  in  their 
genesis  and  in  their  expression.  What  can 
altruism  mean  in  a  universe  without  sepa- 
rate personalities ;  or  honor,  or  sincerity, 
or  loyalty,  or  faithfulness  ?  These  are  all 
terms  applicable  only  to  individuals  sus- 
taining a  mutual  relationship.  The  obvious 
fact  is  that  the  only  hope  of  preserving  the 
moral  gains  of  humanity  lies  in  the  per- 
sistence of  a  community  of  human  per- 
sons. Love,  righteousness,  fidelity,  in  an 
absolute  and  unrelated  Being,  are  incon- 
ceivable. 

Moreover,  spiritual  quality  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  case  cannot  be  detached  from 
a  man  to  be  appropriated  and  preserved 


16        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

by  God.  All  spiritual  quality  is  simply 
personality  in  action,  and  when  the  person- 
ality perishes,  the  action  ceases  as  well. 
The  human  mind  has  been  able  to  con- 
ceive this  reabsorption  into  God,  to  whom 
in  some  mysterious  way,  we,  with  our 
dying  gasp,  hand  over  all  our  moral  gains, 
only  by  translating  it  into  physical  terms. 
The  ocean  can  reabsorb  and  merge  its 
separate  drops,  that  lose  their  identity 
and  give  their  substance  to  the  sea.  So 
our  bodies  can  commingle  with  the  earth, 
and  dissolving  can  give  their  elements  to 
the  common  stock.  But  the  essence  of 
personality  is  self-conscious  separateness. 
That  men,  on  becoming  extinct  as  persons, 
can  hand  over  their  qualities,  abstracted 
from  them,  to  swell  the  general  sum  of  spirit 
in  the  universe,  is  inconceivable.  A  man's 
goodness  is  as  inalienably  his  possession  as 
greenness  is  the  possession  of  the  tree,  and 
only  when  the  greenness  can  persist  after 
the  tree  is  gone,  can  righteousness,  ab- 
stracted from  the  personality  whose  func- 
tion it  is,  fly  unattached  to  be  assimilated 
by  another.  Such  detached  spiritual  qual- 
ities are  as  impossible  as  the  grin  of  the 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    17 

Cheshire  cat  in  "Alice  in  Wonderland," 
that  stayed  after  the  cat  was  gone.  The 
philosophy  of  reabsorption  offers  no  hope 
of  preserving  the  values  which  humanity 
has  attained ;  it  promises  no  future  save 
endless  cycles  of  recurrent  existence,  as 
the  central  Being  sends  out  emanations 
and  reabsorbs  them  in  unintermittent 
and  meaningless  succession.  If  ever  there 
shines  a  gleam  of  hope  in  a  thinker 
of  the  pantheistic  school,  it  is  because 
in  spite  of  all  his  words,  he  has  kept  at 
least  the  shadow  of  persistent  personality, 
in  whose  endless  increase  the  spiritual 
gains  of  experience  can  be  preserved.  The 
plain  fact  is  that  moral  qualities  are  forms 
of  personal  energy,  and  cannot  persevere 
apart  from  the  persons  whose  attributes 
they  are. 

Another  mitigating  consideration  that 
is  often  urged  to  defeat  the  malice  of  per- 
sonality's annihilation,  is  that  no  good  life 
can  be  in  vain,  because  its  influence  goes  on. 
But  George  Eliot's 

"Choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again, 
In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence," 
c 


18        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

while  it  has  a  literary  and  emotional  value, 
has  little  value  for  thought.  One  of  our 
leading  American  astronomers  has  elabo- 
rated in  a  stirring  lecture  seven  ways,  in 
one  of  which  our  present  solar  system  must 
come  to  its  final  cataclysm.  Whether  or 
not  he  has  canvassed  all  the  possibilities,  it 
is  obvious  that  the  earth  on  which  we  live 
is  not  a  permanent  affair.  The  influence, 
therefore,  which  follows  in  the  train  of  a 
Christ  or  a  Lincoln  is  essentially  as  tran- 
sient as  the  personality  that  first  created  it, 
if  death  ends  all.  For  on  a  planet  which 
is  but  a  temporary  stage,  as  sure  to  dis- 
appear in  time  as  night  is  to  follow  day,  we 
use  a  few  years  of  dwindling  influence 
as  a  blanket  to  cover  the  tragedy  of  an  an- 
nihilated life,  when  we  plead  that  what 
Lincoln  did  will  last  after  what  Lincoln 
was  has  perished.  Both  what  Lincoln  was 
and  what  he  did,  in  a  world  where  death 
is  the  end,  come  at  last  to  a  like  inglorious 
conclusion. 

Moreover,  the  essential  unreasonableness 
of  the  universe  in  carelessly  destroying  its 
most  precious  possessions,  when  with  infi- 
nite sacrifice  they  have  been  created,  con- 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    19 

cerns  not  so  much  the  influence  of  a  man  as 
it  concerns  the  man  himself.  What  Christ 
was  is  far  more  significant  than  what  Christ 
did,  and  the  latter,  like  a  stream,  gains  all 
its  quality  from  the  spring  of  personal 
wealth  and  power  out  of  which  it  flowed. 
Granted  that  the  influence  of  Jesus  for  a 
few  aeons  will  go  on,  what  has  become  of 
the  creative  source  of  that  influence  ?  Does 
the  world  build  a  character  like  that,  which 
has  held  now  sixty  generations  in  its  spirit- 
ual mastership,  and  then  throw  it  utterly 
away  ?  Is  God  blowing  soap-bubbles  ? 
Did  he  dip  the  pipe  of  his  power  in  the 
suds  of  matter  and  blow  the  character  of 
Jesus,  that  it  might  entertain  him  with 
its  iridescence,  burst  to  his  satisfaction  and 
be  gone  ?  Then  in  the  end  the  whole  race 
is  but  a  conglomerate  bubble,  such  as 
children  love,  in  which  one  lobe  adds  to  the 
iridescent  beauty  of  another,  but  in  which 
each  in  time  will  break  and  all  at  last  will 
disappear.  This  is  the  universe  without 
immortality.  The  words  reasonableness 
and  purposefulness,  in  any  connotation 
known  to  man,  can  hardly  be  applied  to 
such  a  world. 


20       ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY 

If,  therefore,  neither  by  the  perpetuation 
of  our  influence,  which  on  a  perishable 
planet  is  impossible,  nor  by  the  assimilation 
of  our  spiritual  values  by  God,  which  is  a 
form  of  words  without  conceivable  content, 
can  the  moral  gains  of  humanity  be  pre- 
served, we  face  this  consequence  to  the  denial 
of  immortality,  that  the  universe  has  no 
way  at  all  of  perpetuating  the  moral  gains 
which  our  race  achieves.  Men  do  not 
commonly  feel  that  so  great  a  consequence 
can  be  involved,  when  they  believe  their 
annihilation.  But  let  a  man  give  wings 
to  his  thought ;  let  him  rise  above  all  care 
for  his  individual  destiny,  and  at  an  altitude 
where  no  selfish  desire  for  hope,  no  eager- 
ness for  personal  comfort  can  deflect  his 
judgment,  let  him  look  down  upon  the  earth, 
and  with  the  creed  of  annihilation  in  his 
thought  consider  its  origin  and  destiny. 
What  summary  of  them  is  possible  but  this  ? 
The  planet  forms  itself  gradually  from 
mysteriously  whirling  star  dust,  cooling 
and  condensing  as  it  whirls ;  on  the  earth 
so  formed  life  appears,  growing  in  plants, 
swimming  in  fish,  crawling  in  reptiles, 
and  at  last  walking  erect  in  man ;  in  man 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    21 

life  evolves  into  those  mystic  functions 
which  we  call  mind  and  character,  —  pre- 
ferring, with  Moses,  service  to  ease,  learning 
with  Ruth  to  cry,  "The  Lord  do  so  to  me 
and  more  also  if  aught  but  death  part  thee 
and  me,"  praising  God  in  David,  in  Jesus 
dying  on  Calvary  for  men,  and  on  innu- 
merable altars  giving  itself  in  sacrifice  for 
honor's  sake  and  truth's.  At  last,  the 
planet,  its  atmosphere  devitalized,  its  heat 
and  light  all  gone,  having  come  from  chaos 
to  chaos  must  return.  After  that,  not 
even  the  memory  shall  be  left  of  any  good 
that  has  been  done  under  the  sun,  but  with 
the  death  of  the  last  man  who  falls  in  a 
world  of  graves,  all  the  toil  and  sacrifice 
of  the  race  come  to  their  futile  end.  That 
is  the  world  without  immortality. 

The  same  process  may  be  going  on  in 
Mars,  but  there  too  the  race  will  work  and 
pray,  aspire  and  sacrifice,  only  at  last  to 
vanish,  with  not  a  vestige  of  memory  to 
hand  down  and  not  a  moral  gain  to  be  pre- 
served. In  a  world  without  immortality  it 
would  seem  that  the  only  permanent  forces 
are  physical.  They  build  themselves  into 
solar  systems  and  resolve  themselves  again, 


22        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

while  life  and  character,  knowledge  and 
spiritual  quality,  the  pride  and  glory  of  the 
race,  are  as  transient  as  though  like  smoke 
rings  they  had  been  blown  for  a  moment  and 
had  been  dissolved.  Without  immortality 
physical  force  alone  persists,  the  builder 
and  destroyer  of  spirit,  and  at  last  the  sole 
survivor  and  victor  over  all. 

Ill 

It  has  been  customary  to  enlarge  upon 
the  blighting  effects  which  such  a  concep- 
tion of  the  world  must  have  on  character. 
Unquestionably  this  can  be  greatly  over- 
done. Huxley  is  clearly  right  when  in 
his  famous  letter  to  Charles  Kingsley,  he 
speaks  with  restrained  indignation  of  the 
collect  which  was  read  at  his  son's  funeral. 
"As  I  stood  beside  the  coffin  of  my  little 
son  the  other  day,"  he  writes,  "with 
my  mind  bent  on  anything  but  disputation, 
the  officiating  minister  read,  as  a  part  of 
his  duty,  the  words,  'If  the  dead  rise  not 
again,  let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow 
we  die.'  I  cannot  tell  you  how  inexpres- 
sibly they  shocked  me.  I  could  have 
laughed   with    scorn.      What !     because    I 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    23 

am  face  to  face  with  irreparable  loss,  because 
I  have  given  back  to  the  source  from  which 
it  came,  the  cause  of  a  great  happiness,  still 
retaining  through  all  my  life  the  blessings 
which  have  sprung  and  will  spring  from  that 
cause,  I  am  to  renounce  my  manhood,  and, 
howling,  grovel  in  bestiality  ?  Why,  the 
very  apes  know  better,  and  if  you  shoot 
their  young,  the  poor  brutes  grieve  their 
grief  out  and  do  not  immediately  seek  dis- 
traction in  a  gorge."  In  many  a  hectic 
description  of  the  ethical  results  of  dis- 
belief in  immortality,  preachers  have  run 
into  danger  of  such  condemnation.  "If 
you  believe  in  no  future  life,"  said  Luther, 
"I  would  not  give  a  mushroom  for  your 
God.  Do,  then,  as  you  like  !  For  if  no 
God,  so  no  devil,  no  hell ;  as  with  a  fallen 
tree,  all  is  over  when  you  die.  Then  plunge 
into  lechery,  rascality,  robbery  and  mur- 
der." Such  a  description  of  the  conse- 
quences of  doubting  life  to  come  is  folly. 
To  be  sure,  a  German  philosopher,  not 
a  preacher,  has  pictured  in  its  most  des- 
perate terms  the  meaning  of  a  hopeless 
world.  Men  have  entertained  three  kinds 
of  hope,  he  tells  us,  and  all  of  them  have 


24        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

failed  :  first,  that  they  might  find  happiness 
in  the  material  comforts  of  life ;  second, 
that  they  might  dwell  in  bliss  in  a  future 
heaven ;  and,  third,  that  they  might  be- 
queath to  their  children  a  social  state  on 
earth  where  ultimate  satisfaction  could  be 
found.  And  now  that  all  these  hopes 
have  failed,  nothing  is  left  but  a  univer- 
sal compact  of  suicide.  That  is  absurd. 
Though  we  all  believed  that  we  were  bodies 
only,  with  a  spiritual  aspect,  and  that  we 
were  working  on  a  transient  task  that 
must  come  to  its  finale  in  a  planet's  ruin, 
we  would  not  commit  suicide.  There  are 
sanctions  for  right  conduct  that  do  not 
depend  upon  the  outcome  of  the  universe, 
and  values  in  living,  that  inhere  in  every 
day's  experience  and  do  not  ask  ultimate 
questions  about  eternity.  Nevertheless, 
when,  believing  in  annihilation,  one  takes  ac- 
count of  the  long  travail  of  the  ages,  weighs 
in  his  imagination  all  the  agony  of  struggle 
and  misfortune  there,  and  perceives  the 
inevitable  end,  when,  like  a  burned-out  cin- 
der, the  earth  whirls  back  to  its  primeval 
chaos,  he  can  understand  the  meaning  of 
the  philosopher  who  wrote:     "Considering 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    25 

the  immense  and  protracted  sorrows  of 
mankind,  it  would  have  been  better  if  the 
earth  had  remained  like  the  moon,  a  mass 
of  slag,  idle  and  without  a  tenant." 

It  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  this  view 
of  the  world,  to  which  we  are  introduced 
by  the  denial  of  immortality,  can  be  with- 
out effect  upon  moral  motives  and  ideals 
of  character.  To  say  that  some  special 
man  has  disbelieved  all  forms  of  personal 
permanence,  and  yet  has  lived  a  life  notable 
for  its  loftiness  of  aim  and  its  integrity, 
is  not  proof  that  belief  in  life  to  come  has  a 
negligible  influence  on  the  characters  of 
men.  For  men  everywhere  and  always 
have  cherished  beliefs  in  some  kind  of  im- 
mortality, however  undesirable ;  in  Chris- 
tianity especially,  moral  motives  have  ever 
been  associated  with  affirmations  of  eternal 
issues  to  spiritual  life  ;  so  that  an  individual, 
in  achieving  his  lofty  character,  may  be  a 
pensioner  on  the  accumulated  faith  of  the 
race,  even  while  he  himself  denies  the  faith. 
Upon  the  other  side,  to  imagine  the  sud- 
den breakdown  of  all  belief  in  immor- 
tality, so  that  the  characters  of  men  are 
deprived    of    old    sanctions    and    supports 


26        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

before  new  ones  have  been  found  to  take 
their  places,  is  no  fair  test  of  the  moral  con- 
sequences of  denying  immortality.  For  all 
such  sudden  changes,  whether  in  the  end 
their  influence  will  prove  a  benefit  or  bane, 
must  cause  an  immediate  disturbance,  easily 
picturable  in  desperate  terms.  If  fairly  we 
are  to  test  the  moral  results  of  affirming 
that  death  ends  all,  we  must  grant  that 
affirmation  to  be  true,  and  then  we  must 
conceive  the  race  as  gradually  discovering 
the  sort  of  world  in  which  it  lives,  until  at 
last  all  men  have  been  convinced  that  this 
is  the  only  world  there  is,  that  death 
means  annihilation,  that  in  the  end  the 
universe  throws  away  its  most  priceless 
possessions,  and  has  no  way  of  preserving 
finally  its  moral  gains.  How  will  the 
characters  of  men  be  affected  by  such  a 
conclusion,    universally   believed  ? 

Many  a  modern  man,  not  altogether 
thoughtless  in  his  nonchalance  about  immor- 
tality, answers  this  question  with  an  asser- 
tion both  familiar  and  full  of  noble  meaning. 
"Virtue  is  its  own  reward,"  he  says.  "Our 
goodness  at  its  best  does  not  depend  for 
inspiration    on  the    pay    it    may    receive. 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    27 

Spiritual  quality  is  its  own  recompense,  and 
does  not,  like  a  Moslem  beggar,  with 
outstretched  palms,  ask  God  for  bak- 
sheesh." That  this  affirmation  of  the  self- 
sufficiency  of  character  is  true  and  elevated 
is  clear  to  a  man  in  proportion  as  he  is  free 
from  spiritual  sordidness  and  is  sensitive 
to  the  intrinsic  worth  of  moral  excellence. 
Even  a  little  thought,  however,  reveals  the 
fact  that  the  assertion  that  virtue  is  its  own 
reward  is  based  upon  a  deeply  spiritual 
idea  of  life's  significance.  Virtue  is  its 
own  reward,  but  for  whom  ?  If  it  be  true 
of  all  of  us,  as  Tennyson  sang  of  the  dead 
Wellington, 

"We  doubt  not  that  for  one  so  true, 
There  must  be  other  nobler  work  to  do 
Than  when  he  fought  at  Waterloo," 

then  it  is  plain  that  spiritual  quality  car- 
ries with  it  its  own  recompense.  For  then 
character  is  eternally  progressive,  and  what- 
ever may  be  the  reaction  of  the  world 
upon  us,  whether  in  gratitude  or  gibes,  in 
praise  or  malediction,  spiritual  life,  growing, 
deepening,  forever  hopeful  of  climbing 
heights  of  quality  yet  unattained,  of  ren- 
dering service  hitherto  beyond  our  reach, 


2S        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 


is  a  possession  so  intrinsically  and  superla- 
tively valuable,  that  to  him  who  has  it  no 
outward  recompense  is  needed  as  a  motive 
for  the  love  of  goodness.  But  when  you 
take  hope  from  character,  when  its  pos- 
sibility of  progress  is  seen  to  end  in  a  blind 
alley,  how  is  virtue  its  own  reward  then  ? 
When  in  some  Cherry  Hill  mine  disaster 
the  rescuers  leap  into  the  lift  and,  with 
eyes  wide  open  to  their  imminent  danger, 
plunge  down  into  the  burning  mine  intent 
on  saviourhood,  and  when  they  straight- 
way are  hauled  up  again,  charred  corpses 
every  one,  in  just  what  sense,  if  death  ends 
all,  was  virtue  its  own  reward  to  them  ? 
The  recompense  of  scholarship  is  the  capac- 
ity for  increasing  scholarship  ;  the  reward  of 
spiritual  life  is  the  hope  of  the  good  man 
to-day  that  to-morrow  he  may  be  better ; 
and  without  this  hope  the  saying  that  virtue 
carries  in  its  bosom  its  own  remuneration 
has  a  vastly  diminished  significance.  The 
pay  of  goodness  is  the  opportunity  to  be- 
come better. 

When,  therefore,  a  man  of  insight 
demands  a  life  to  come,  it  is  not  because 
he  seeks  outward  recompense  for  a  good  life 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    29 

here ;  it  is  because  his  goodness  here,  if  it 
is  to  be  passionate  and  earnest,  must  have 
the  eternal  chance  of  being  better.  His 
value  lies  in  what  he  may  become  —  not 
in  what  he  has  or  does  or  is,  but  in  his 
possibilities  —  and  by  as  much  as  hope  is 
stolen  from  him,  until  he  clearly  sees  that 
his  character  is  a  seed  which  the  frost  of 
accident  may  nip  to-day  and  which  the 
winter  of  death  will  surely  kill  to-morrow, 
in  so  far  the  heart  is  taken  from  the  saying 
that  virtue  is  its  own  reward. 

Of  course  this  does  not  mean  that  in  a 
world  without  immortality  an  ethical  life 
is  impossible.  To  say  that  would  be  pre- 
posterous. If  the  world,  long  looked  upon 
as  a  ship  whose  captain  knows  the  course 
and  outcome  of  the  journey  and  whose 
passengers  have  a  destination  worthy  of 
the  cruise,  is  now  to  be  regarded  as  a  raft, 
drifting  aimlessly  upon  the  high  seas  of  ex- 
istence, the  temporary  home  of  beings  that 
are  born  to  die,  this  changed  conception  will 
not  do  away  either  with  the  necessity  or  the 
possibility  of  morals.  Upon  the  raft,  the 
worst  men  will  seize  what  they  can  for  them- 
selves ;  but  the  best  men,  moved  by  pity  for 


30        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

the  plight  of  their  fellows,  will  establish 
rules  and  regulations  adapted  to  the  wel- 
fare of  the  whole,  will  punish  offenders, 
and  in  many  a  beautiful  self-sacrifice  will 
prefer  the  good  of  others  to  their  own. 
"Pity,"  says  Schopenhauer,  the  pessi- 
mist, "is  the  only  source  of  unselfish  actions 
and  the  true  basis  of  morality."  More- 
over, on  the  raft,  quite  apart  from  ques- 
tions of  the  future,  fortitude,  honor  and 
friendliness  may  well  be  recognized  as  the 
most  worthy  attributes  of  character;  scales 
of  moral  value  may  be  accepted  in  which 
the  noblest  stoical  virtues  are  made  pre- 
eminent ;  and  courage  and  kindliness  may  be 
admirably  exhibited.  From  such  motives 
an  ethical  life  may  result,  hopeless,  but 
under  the  circumstances  far  from  ignoble. 
To  be  sure,  when  Haeckel,  who  counts  God 
and  immortality  delusions,  declares  that  a 
man  has  an  "unquestioned  right  to  put  an 
end  to  his  own  sufferings  by  death" ; 
when  he  says,  "We  have  a  right,  if  not  a 
duty,  under  such  conditions  to  put  an  end 
to  the  sufferings  of  our  fellow-men"  ;  when 
he  admires  the  ancient  Spartan  habit  of 
strangling  new-born  children  if   they    are 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    31 

weakly,  and  urges  its  general  adoption,  he 
is  making  explicit  the  logical  morality  of  the 
raft.  When  Nietsche  rails  upon  all  hos- 
pitals, orphanages  and  every  kind  of  saving 
agency  by  which  we  seek  to  help  the 
unfortunate,  and  so  perpetuate  the  weak, 
when  the  world  is  needed  for  the  strong, 
he  is  clearly  stating  his  vision  of  the  moral- 
ity of  the  raft.  Tenderness,  sympathy, 
self-sacrifice  and  love,  doubtless  would 
persist,  but  their  tone  would  certainly  be 
changed.  They  would  be  the  old  qualities 
which  we  have  known,  no  longer  motived 
by  any  eternal  value  in  personality,  by  any 
endless  possibility  of  development  in  char- 
acter, by  any  conviction  that  the  spiritual 
life  has  everlasting  issues  which  make  its 
failure  or  success  man's  chief  concern. 
When  one  endeavors  to  picture  to  himself 
the  noblest  sentiments  that  could  find  resi- 
dence in  men,  in  a  world  where  no  one 
dreamed  of  immortality  and  all  had  seen 
the  implications  of  their  disbelief,  he  can 
rise  no  higher  than  the  compassionate 
spirit  which  Whittier's  sonnet  shows : 

"My  heart  was  heavy,  for  its  trust  had  been 
Abused,  its  kindness  answered  with  foul  wrong : 


32        ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY 

So,  turning  gloomily  from  my  fellow-men, 
One  summer  Sabbath-day,  I  strolled  among 
The  green  mounds  of  the  village  burial  place ; 
Where,  pondering  how  all  human  love  and  hate 
Find  one  sad  level,  and  how,  soon  or  late, 
Wronged  and  wrongdoer,  each  with  meekened  face, 
And  cold  hands  folded  over  a  still  heart, 
Pass  the  green  threshold  of  our  common  grave, 
Whither  all  footsteps  tend,  whence  none  depart, 
Awed  for  myself  and  pitying  my  race, 
Our  common  sorrow,  like  a  mighty  wave, 
Swept  all  my  pride  away,  and,  trembling,  I  forgave." 

So  on  the  raft,  for  pity's  sake  men  could 
be  kind  and  serviceable,  and  even  could 
forgive  their  enemies.  But  it  is  to  be 
remarked  that  when  we  seek  an  expression 
of  this  compassionate  pity,  we  must  look 
for  it  to  a  man  like  Whit  tier,  who  believes 
in  God  and  immortality.  No  Haeckel  or 
Nietsche,  who  really  does  think  the  world 
a  raft  and  deeply  sees  the  meaning  of  that 
creed,  has  ever  left  on  record  any  expression 
of  such  compassionate  regard  for  men. 

IV 

The  reason  for  the  difference  which  the 
universal  denial  of  immortality  would  make 
to  the  motives  and  ideals  of  character  is 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    33 

not  difficult  to  see.  The  attainment  of 
an  honorable  and  useful  life  costs  sacrifice. 
Present  pleasures  must  be  foregone  or 
subordinated  for  the  sake  of  a  central  moral 
purpose,  and  this  fact,  which  looks  simple 
and  unimpassioned  in  print,  in  life  involves 
a  sacrificial  struggle  whose  depth  and 
intensity  the  novelists  and  dramatists  of 
the  race  have  tried  in  vain  adequately  to 
describe.  Now,  man's  willingness  to  sac- 
rifice for  anything  depends  on  his  evaluation 
of  its  worth.  The  principal  effect  of  Christian 
faith  upon  man's  moral  life  is  to  be  found 
neither  in  the  scruples  which  it  induces 
regarding  certain  sins,  nor  in  the  positive 
duties  which  it  enjoins,  but  in  the  tran- 
scendent value  it  places  on  personality. 
The  New  Testament  is  a  treatise  upon  self- 
respect.  The  central  theme  around  which 
all  its  harmonies  are  composed  is  the  spirit- 
ual nature,  the  permanent  continuance,  the 
infinite  value,  the  boundless  possibility  of 
man.  The  great  affirmations  of  the  Chris- 
tian Gospel  that  God  created  men  and  loves 
them,  that  they  are  immortal  and  that 
God  needs  them  to  perfect  his  work,  merge 
their  influence  in  raising  man's  evaluation 


34        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

of  himself.  In  the  New  Testament  men 
are  sons  of  God,  if  sons,  heirs,  heirs  of  God 
and  joint  heirs  with  Jesus  Christ ;  all  things 
are  theirs,  whether  life  or  death,  or  things 
present  or  things  to  come ;  neither  life  nor 
death,  nor  angels  nor  principalities  nor 
powers,  nor  things  present  nor  things  to 
come,  nor  height  nor  depth,  nor  any  other 
creature  can  separate  them  from  the  love 
of  God ;  and  being  now  sons  of  God,  they 
cannot  imagine  what  they  shall  be,  save 
that  their  destiny  is  exceeding  abundantly 
above  all  they  can  ask  or  think.  Men  had 
never  thought  so  highly  of  themselves  before. 
Celsus,  the  great  opponent  of  the  Christians 
in  the  early  centuries,  goes  to  the  heart  of 
the  matter  when  he  says,  "The  root  of 
Christianity  is  its  excessive  valuation  of  the 
human  soul,  and  the  absurd  idea  that  God 
takes  interest  in  man."  Aristotle  had  said 
that  some  men  are  born  savages,  no  more 
changeable  than  dogs ;  that  artisans  are 
living  machines,  incapable  of  virtue ;  that 
women  are  nature's  failures  in  the  attempt 
to  make  men.  The  ancient  laws  had 
encouraged  the  slaying  of  infants  as  a 
measure   of  household   economy  and   had 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    35 

looked  upon  slaves  in  the  arena  with  the 
beasts  as  we  look  upon  a  hunt.  Man- 
kind had  known  benevolence  in  fraternal 
orders,  public  charity,  and  the  beautiful 
meaning  of  sacrificial  friendship,  but  phi- 
lanthropy, the  love  of  man  as  man,  the 
conception  of  personality  in  child  or  slave 
or  woman  or  king  as  a  priceless  spiritual 
treasure,  this  is  peculiarly  the  outcome  of 
those  faiths  in  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and 
in  eternal  life  which  made  Jesus  say, 
"What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the 
whole  world  and  lose  his  own  self?"  Emer- 
son is  authority  for  the  statement  that 
"Jesus  alone  in  history  estimated  the 
greatness  of  man." 

Even  when  this  principal  emphasis  of  the 
Christian  faith  has  been  poorly  appre- 
hended, even  when  it  has  been  mangled 
by  gloomy  theology  or  despoiled  of  its 
effect  by  ecclesiastical  folly,  it  has  exercised 
an  incalculable  influence  on  the  characters 
of  men.  It  has  made  those  who  deeply 
understood  it  feel  that  no  sacrifice  can  be 
too  great  for  the  preservation  of  spiritual 
quality  and  the  service  of  the  personalities 
of   other   men.     Self-respect,    that   inward 


36        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

soul  of  the  greatest  motives  for  character, 
is  by  it  raised  to  loftiest  terms. 

When,  therefore,  the  opposite  creed  is 
asserted,  how  is  it  conceivable  that  motives 
and  ideals  of  character  shall  not  suffer  a 
tremendous  change  ?  The  denial  of  immor- 
tality leads  a  man  by  an  inevitable  drift 
toward  the  affirmation  that  we  essentially  are 
flesh,  not  spirit.  When  a  man  is  asked  if  he 
has  a  soul,  even  though  he  is  a  Christian, 
he  is  likely  to  declare  that  he  has  one  ;  and 
if  it  be  inquired  whether  he  has  a  body,  he 
will  doubtless  assert  that  he  has  a  body  too. 
Such  is  our  habit  of  colloquial  speech,  but 
even  to  casual  thought  how  palpably  absurd 
it  is  !  Who  is  this  third  party,  this  holding 
corporation,  this  tertium  quid,  who  on  the 
one  side  owns  a  body  and  on  the  other  side,  a 
soul  ?  A  man  is  not  so  divided  into  three 
parts,  one  of  which  is  possessor  of  the  other 
two.  A  man  has  two  aspects.  One  aspect 
of  him  is  physical ;  it  can  be  seen  and 
touched,  weighed  and  measured ;  its  chem- 
ical constituents  can  be  analyzed  and 
reduced  to  formulae.  The  other  aspect  of 
him  is  invisible,  intangible ;  it  cannot  be 
weighed  or  measured  ;  it  is  his  world  of  loves, 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    37 

hates,  thoughts,  ambitions  ;  in  it  are  resident 
his  sense  of  duty  and  his  aspirations  after 
God,  and  at  the  centre  is  that  mystical, 
self-conscious  memory,  which  survives  the 
passage  of  the  years,  outlasts  the  building 
and  break-down  of  the  flesh  and  gives  con- 
tinuity to  all  his  personal  experience. 

Concerning  this  strangely  divided  nature 
of  man,  the  body  and  the  soul,  the  central 
question  upon  whose  answer  all  interpreta- 
tion of  life's  meaning  waits  is  this :  Are 
we  bodies  that  have  spirits,  or  are  we 
spirits  that  have  bodies  ?  Which  is  essen- 
tially the  man  ?  The  Christian  affirmation 
is  not  that  we  have  souls,  but  that  we  are 
souls ;  that  we  substantially  are  spirit,  as 
invisible  as  God,  since  no  one  ever  saw 
himself  or  saw  another  man.  The  affirma- 
tion of  the  materialist  is  not  that  we  have 
bodies,  but  that  we  are  bodies ;  that  flesh  is 
the  essence  of  us,  and  that  all  our  intellec- 
tual and  moral  life,  like  the  peal  of  a  bell, 
is  a  transient  result  of  physical  vibrations, 
and  ceases  when  the  cause  is  stopped. 
Between  these  two  affirmations  the  deci- 
sion lies :  either  we  are  bodies  that  for  a 
little   time   possess   a   spiritual   aspect,    or 


38        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

else  we  are  spirits  using  an  instrument  of 
flesh. 

Long  ago  in  an  Athenian  death-cell,  where 
Socrates  awaited  the  poisoned  hemlock,  this 
question  was  discussed.  Some  there  com- 
pared man  to  a  harp,  and  thought  his 
intellectual  and  moral  life  the  harmony 
that  comes  from  the  vibrating  strings. 
Since,  therefore,  he  essentially  is  the  in- 
strument, which  gives  being  to  the  music, 
the  music  cannot  outlast  the  destruction 
of  the  harp.  But  Socrates  insisted  that 
man  is  neither  harp  nor  harmony ;  that  he 
is  a  harper  who  plays  upon  the  physical 
strings,  dependent  upon  them  for  the 
quality  of  music  he  produces,  but  inde- 
pendent of  them  for  his  existence,  since  the 
player  may  leave  one  instrument  and  find 
another.  So  to-day  the  assertion  of  our 
immortality  involves  the  faith  that  we  are 
invisible,  spiritual  personalities ;  but  belief 
in  annihilation  is  coupled  with  the  thought 
that  we  are  the  physical  instruments,  which, 
perishing,  bring  to  an  end  the  harmony 
they  caused. 

If  we  are  thus  transient  beings,  funda- 
mentally physical,  shall  we  long  make  the 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    39 

great  sacrifices  which  spiritual  character 
demands  ?  Does  Ictinus  pick  out  a  quick- 
sand on  which  to  build  the  Parthenon  and 
lavish  on  it  there  the  genius  of  his  art, 
knowing  that  every  stroke  of  his  mallet 
is  making  a  beauty  that  to-day  is  and  to- 
morrow will  be  gone  ?  Does  Raphael 
choose  cotton  cloth,  whose  slender  and 
loosely  woven  fibres  will  hardly  bear  the 
strokes  of  his  brush,  on  which  to  paint  a 
Sistine  Madonna  ?  And  will  a  man  develop 
passionate  moral  enthusiasms  and  aspiring 
virtues  on  any  other  basis  than  spiritual 
permanence  ?  The  value  of  the  object 
of  sacrifice  always  determines  the  willing- 
ness of  men  to  pay  the  cost,  and  immortality 
is  that  affirmation  of  the  eternal  worth  of 
character  which  alone  can  make  reasonable 
the  devotion,  aspiration  and  self-denial 
which  great  character  requires.  No  man 
will  work  hard  sewing  diamonds  on  tissue 
paper. 

V 

If  the  devaluation  of  personality  which 
inevitably  follows  the  assertion  that  death 
ends  all  so  affects  the  struggle  for  spiritual 


4o        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

quality  in  the  individual,  it  must  neces- 
sarily affect  those  enthusiasms  for  social 
service  on  which  the  future  of  philan- 
thropy and  democracy  depends.  Professor 
Hyslop  can  hardly  be  suspected  of  a  prej- 
udiced interest  in  evangelical  theology ; 
yet  he  affirms  without  qualification  :  ' '  The 
ideals  of  democracy  will  live  or  die  with 
the  belief  in  immortality."  His  meaning 
clearly  is  that  only  moral  permanence  can 
furnish  the  necessary  basis  for  those  devo- 
tions which  the  perpetuation  of  democracy 
requires.  If  they  are  to  be  in  earnest,  men 
must  feel  when  they  invest  their  sacrifices 
in  society  that  they  are  investing  in  a  bank 
that  will  not  fail. 

To  such  a  statement  the  reply  continually 
is  made  that  though  the  individual  does  die, 
humanity  goes  on,  and  that  personal  im- 
mortality has  nothing  to  do  with  the  con- 
tinuance of  those  social  causes  which, 
persisting,  may  well  come  to  their  victory 
on  earth,  whether  life  beyond  the  grave  be 
true  or  false.  In  May,  1865,  a  triumphal 
procession  moved  down  Pennsylvania  Ave- 
nue in  Washington.  The  victors  of  a  great 
war  were  coming  home  amid  the  accla- 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    41 

mations  of  their  fellow-citizens.  But  their 
comrades  who  had  marched  with  them  to 
the  front,  who  had  borne  with  them  the 
danger  and  adventure  of  the  great  cam- 
paign, were  lying  buried  under  the  sod  at 
Antietam  or  at  Gettysburg.  So,  say  the 
men  who  cannot  see  the  crucial  import  of 
immortality  to  social  service,  let  us  die, 
and  some  day  the  survivors  of  the  war  will 
celebrate  a  triumph  for  our  cause  and  will 
gratefully  remember  our  share  in  making 
the  consummation  possible.  Noble  as  this 
exhortation  is,  it  depends  for  its  apparent 
validity  upon  a  short  look  into  the  future. 
A  long  look  negatives  the  force  of  its  appeal. 
The  polar  ice-caps  now  hold  undisputed 
sway  over  territory  where,  so  scientists 
inform  us,  the  most  luxurious  fauna  and 
flora  once  were  flourishing.  Whether  the 
planet  tarries  until  the  polar  ice-caps  seize 
it  all,  or  whether  some  swifter  cataclysm 
wrecks  it,  the  earth  is  as  temporary  as  any 
other  sphere,  that,  slowly  built  out  of  spirals 
of  revolving  dust,  in  the  end  must  dis- 
appear. The  race  is  not  immortal  if  the 
individuals  are  not.  A  limited  succession  of 
transient  men  does  not  make  a  permanent 


42        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

society.  A  long  look  into  the  future  does 
not  show  us  a  triumphant  humanity,  rejoic- 
ing because  the  war  is  over.  In  the  end 
some  solitary  survivor  of  mankind  must 
hold  alone  his  triumphal  procession  down 
the  Pennsylvania  Avenue  of  the  earth,  and, 
if  he  can,  cry  "Victory"  when  he  dies. 

Without  immortality,  therefore,  the  long 
struggle  of  humanity  has  no  consummation 
in  which  harmony  comes  at  last  out  of  the 
present  discord  of  inequity.  Behind  all  the 
labor  of  saints  and  martyrs  has  been  the 
hope,  held  in  innumerable  forms,  that  some 
worthy  end  would  crown  their  toil,  that 
when  Paul  planted  and  Apollos  watered, 
God  would  give  the  increase.  In  the  old 
poem  on  the  Battle  of  Blenheim,  where 
little  Peterkin  climbs  on  Caspar's  knee  to 
hear  the  thrilling  tale  of  brave  fighting 
and  bloody  sacrifice,  the  boy  interrupts 
the  narrative  to  ask,  "What  good 
came  of  it  at  last?"  That  has  always 
been  humanity's  question  about  life's  bat- 
tle, and  one  of  the  distinctive  ministries 
of  religious  faith  to  social  service  has  been 
the  affirmation  of  a  coming  Kingdom, 
"toward  which  the  whole  creation  moves," 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    43 

and  in  which  justice  shall  at  last  be  done. 
Some  such  hope  is  fundamental  to  undis- 
courageable  social  sacrifice. 

Emerson,  indeed,  in  the  seclusion  of  his 
academic  study  may  inveigh  against  thus 
appealing  to  the  future  for  justice,  against 
trusting  the  arbitrament  of  eternity  to 
level  the  scales  of  judgment  on  sin,  and  may 
insist  that  with  indefectible  exactitude 
justice  is  rendered  every  hour.  He  may 
even  affirm  that  the  thief  who  steals  sil- 
ver steals  more  from  himself  than  from 
the  man  he  robs,  since  from  his  victim  he 
pilfers  only  material  wealth,  while  from  him- 
self he  takes  character.  But  when  from 
the  quiet  of  philosophic  study  into  the 
thick  of  life  we  carry  the  idea  that  justice 
is  done  every  hour,  the  assertion  grows  less 
clear  and  certain.  The  problem  is  not 
solved  by  balancing  the  theft  of  silver 
spoons  against  the  despoiling  of  the  thief's 
own  character.  When,  rather,  some  Phar- 
isee robs  widows'  houses  and  for  a  pre- 
tence makes  long  prayers,  or  some  human 
beast  sells  girls  to  shame  while  still  so 
young  that  they  cry  for  their  dolls,  and 
when  at  last  the  despoilers  grow  fat,  revel- 


44        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

ling  in  their  gain,  while  their  victims  starve 
in  desolation  or  slay  themselves  to  escape 
from  their  despair ;  if  that  is  the  finale  of 
the  matter,  to  be  left  there  an  enigma  of 
injustice,  it  is  impossible  by  any  smooth 
words  to  cover  the  fact  of  utter  inequity. 
Striking  and  true  though  Emerson's  fig- 
ure be  that  we  cannot  have  sin  without 
immediate  punishment,  any  more  than  we 
can  have  positive  magnetism  at  one  end  of 
a  needle  without  negative  magnetism  at  the 
other,  the  analogy  does  not  cover  the  case. 
When  Roman  soldiers  take  the  loftiest 
soul  that  ever  blessed  the  earth,  and  mock 
him,  spit  upon  him,  crown  him  with  thorns 
and  crucify  him  ;  when  the  scene  ends  with  a 
scribe  wagging  his  head  and  calling,  "Save 
thyself,"  while  from  the  cross  the  cry  comes 
down,  "My  God!  My  God!  Why  hast 
thou  forsaken  me?"  and  when  we  believe 
that  to  be  the  last  of  the  matter,  scribe 
and  Christ  alike  annihilated,  and  in  a  few 
aeons  their  influence  even,  good  or  bad, 
brought  inconsequentially  to  an  end  in  the 
planet's  dissolution,  a  profound  injustice  is 
there  asserted  which  no  glozing  words  can 
hide. 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    45 

The  demand  for  justice  is  not  a  cry  for 
vengeance,  nor,  as  Emerson  suggests,  a 
desire  that  the  oppressed  shall  share  at 
some  future  time  the  sort  of  pleasure  in 
which  their  oppressors  revelled  here.  The 
demand  for  justice  requires  that  a  solution 
shall  be  reached,  in  which  the  oppressors, 
brought  to  their  senses  by  the  reforming 
influence  of  punishment  or  by  the  con- 
quering power  of  love,  shall  join  with  the 
oppressed,  redeemed  from  their  disasters, 
and  that  together  both  shall  bear  a  part  in 
some  universal  consummation  that  is  ade- 
quate to  explain  and  justify  the  strife  and 
suffering  of  earth.  Without  that,  reason- 
ableness and  justice,  in  any  connotation 
known  to  man,  cannot  be  affirmed  of  the 
world. 

"Right  forever  on  the  scaffold, 
Wrong  forever  on  the  throne," 

how  all  the  vicarious  servants  of  humanity 
bear  witness  to  it  !  Only  of  a  universe 
that  preserves  its  moral  gains,  and  resolves 
to  harmony  the  dissonance  of  its  inequities, 
can  justice  be  asserted  — 

"But  that  scaffold  sways  the  future, 
And  behind  the  dim  unknown 


46        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

Standcth  God  within  the  shadow, 
Keeping  watch  above  his  own." 

Without  immortality  all  such  hopeful 
outlook  on  the  future  becomes  impossible. 
Society  itself,  then,  has  a  limited  existence. 
As  another  put  it,  the  social  task  of 
humanity,  with  all  its  cost  in  blood  and 
tears  that  righteousness  may  reign,  is, 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  everlasting  ages, 
as  unenduring  as  Michael  Angelo's,  when 
Pietro,  the  tyrant,  commissioned  him  to 
scoop  up  snow  in  the  Via  Larga,  and  with 
painstaking  art  model  a  statue  that  before 
evening  would  melt  in  the  Italian  sun. 

That  this  thought  of  the  consummation 
of  the  long,  sacrificial  struggle  of  humanity, 
when  it  is  fully  and  universally  believed 
and  understood,  will  blight  the  deepest 
incentives  for  social  service,  has  been  the 
fear  even  of  those  who  were  convinced 
that  such  a  consummation  is  the  inevitable 
end.  Professor  Gold  win  Smith  in  a  nota- 
ble essay,  published  in  1904  in  the  North 
American  Review,  speaks  frankly  of  his 
apprehension  that  when  all  men  believe, 
as  he  does,  that  immortality  is  false,  the 
soul  of  public-mindedness  will  die  and  the 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    47 

great  inspirations  perish  that  have  motived 
our  social  service  and  our  passion  for 
democracy.  "A  man  of  sense  (disbeliev- 
ing in  immortality),"  he  concludes,  "will 
probably  be  satisfied  to  let  reforms  alone, 
and  to  consider  how  he  may  best  go  through 
the  journey  of  life  with  comfort  and,  if 
possible,  with  enjoyment  to  himself."  Such 
is  the  testimony  of  a  great  man  to  the  con- 
sequences of  his  own  creed. 

If  it  be  asserted  that  the  truth  of  immor- 
tality does  not  prevent  a  lamentable  end  to 
humanity's  long,  sacrificial  toil,  the  answer 
is  evident  at  once.  The  purpose  of  all 
social  service  is  man's  progress  in  character. 
The  horrors  of  the  white  slave  traffic,  of 
tenements  in  city  slums,  and  of  corruption 
in  city  government,  the  evils  of  war  and 
drunkenness  and  tyranny,  all  lie  in  this, 
that  they  debase,  demoralize  and  in  the  end 
utterly  ruin  the  characters  of  men.  The 
exhaustless  motive  for  philanthropy  is 
not  that  we  are  toning  down  life's  worst 
iniquities  until  our  ultimate  dissolution 
comes,  but  that  we  are  altering  the  environ- 
ments that  are  inimical  to  personal  charac- 
ter, and  that  personal  character  is  an  eternal 


48       ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

matter,  the  one  means  by  which  the  uni- 
verse can  preserve  its  moral  gains.  The 
infinite  value  of  personality,  which  immor- 
tality asserts,  makes  any  fight  for  social 
justice  worth  while. 

When  the  modern  man,  therefore,  is 
nonchalant  about  the  affirmation  or  denial 
of  a  future  life,  he  is  nonchalant  about  all 
the  deepest  problems  of  humanity.  The 
denial  of  imfnortality  introduces  us  into  a 
world  where  men  are  flesh  with  a  transient 
spiritual  aspect;  where  there  are  no  per- 
manent elements  save  the  physical  forces 
which  build  solar  systems  and  destroy 
them ;  where  earth  throws  away  with 
utter  carelessness  its  most  precious  treas- 
ures, never  resolves  to  harmony  the  dis- 
sonance of  its  inequities  and  has  no  way 
of  preserving  its  moral  gains ;  where  no 
eternal  value  in  personality  motives  sacri- 
fice for  spiritual  quality  in  the  individual 
or  furnishes  basis  for  passionate  and  hope- 
ful service  to  the  race.  If  life  eternal  is 
not  true,  that  is  our  world,  and  sooner  or 
later  men  will  find  it  out.  To  such  a  world 
we  must  accommodate  ourselves  as  best  we 
can,  if  immortality  is  false. 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY    49 

This  plain  issue  .to  the  creed  of  annihila- 
tion induces  many  a  thoughtful  man,  who 
has  traced  to  their  last  blind  alley  the 
hopes  of  humanity  in  a  world  where  death 
ends  all,  to  assert  the  truth  of  immortality, 
not  because  he  can  prove  it,  as  he  can  the 
multiplication  table  or  the  expanding  power 
of  heat,  but  because  he  finds  it  necessary, 
as  an  adventure  of  faith,  to  make  the  uni- 
verse reasonable. 


CHAPTER   II 
The  Possibility  of  Immortality 


In  spite  of  all  that  we  have  said  about 
the  nonchalance  of  modern  men  concerning 
life  to  come,  the  possibility  of  immortality 
is  far  more  in  question  with  many  of  them 
than  is  its  significance.  While  they  may 
not  have  traced  through  all  its  implications 
the  meaning  of  annihilation,  they  have  felt 
instinctively  the  difference  that  is  involved 
for  personal  hope  in  the  affirmation  or  denial 
of  life  to  come.  Facing  their  own  death 
or  enduring  bereavement  in  the  loss  of 
others,  they  have  found  their  apathetic 
attitude  dissolved  in  grief  and  in  unquench- 
able desire  for  hope  ;  and  when,  in  addition 
to  this  natural  reaction  in  the  presence  of 
death,  they  come  to  see  the  baneful  mean- 
ing for  the  whole  of  life  involved  in  the  creed 
that  the  grave  ends  all,  they  do  not  ask 
whether  immortality  makes  a  difference  to 

so 


THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  IMMORTALITY     51 

life,  but  whether  it  is  at  all  possible  for  their 
belief  reasonably  to  follow  their  desire  for 
immortality.  Huxley,  although  he  was  ag- 
nostic concerning  life  to  come,  wrote  to  John 
Morley  in  1883:  "It  flashes  across  me  at 
all  sorts  of  times  with  a  sort  of  horror 
that  in  1900  I  shall  probably  know  no  more 
of  what  is  going  on  than  I  did  in  1800. 
I  would  sooner  be  in  Hell  a  good  deal,  at 
any  rate  in  one  of  the  upper  circles  where 
the  climate  and  company  are  not  too  trying. 
I  wonder  if  you  are  plagued  in  this  way." 
Sooner  or  later,  either  by  personal  experi- 
ence of  bondage  to  the  fear  of  death  or  by 
insight  into  the  sort  of  world  which  dis- 
belief in  immortality  creates,  most  men 
reach  the  place  where  the  possibility  of 
believing  in  life  to  come  is  an  urgent  ques- 
tion with  them. 

When,  therefore,  we  insist,  as  we  have 
done,  that  the  denial  of  personal  permanence 
makes  a  vast  difference  to  the  whole  mean- 
ing of  human  life,  many  a  man  will  turn  on 
us  to  say :  "No  one  need  tell  me  that  the 
question  of  immortality  involves  great  con- 
sequences for  me  now.  I  have  stood  beside 
my  dead ;  I  know.     With  increasing  years 


52        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

I  have  thought  of  my  own  mortality  and 
have  considered  with  what  irreversible 
steps  I  walk  to  my  certain  end.  It  is  not 
easy  to  think  of  my  loves  vanquished, 
my  ideals  unattained,  my  memory  quite 
extinct,  and  I  as  though  I  had  never  been 
at  all.  At  times  I,  too,  have  brooded  over 
our  race,  its  mysterious  birth,  its  long 
travail,  its  strange  fight  with  sin  and  cir- 
cumstance, and  have  wondered  whether 
it  can  be  that  in  the  end  there  will  be 
nothing  to  show  for  all  this  struggle,  aspi- 
ration, hope  and  sacrifice,  except  new 
worlds  built  from  the  ruins  of  the  old,  and 
in  those  new  worlds  no  memory  even  of  all 
that  here  was  attempted,  partially  achieved, 
and  at  last  utterly  undone.  No  one  need 
tell  me  that  this  makes  a  difference.  I 
want  to  believe  in  immortality,  but  can  I  ? 
Is  immortality  possible  ?  What  weighty 
arguments  range  themselves  against  it  ! 
Just  because  I  want  so  to  believe  it,  I  will 
not  sell  my  reason  out  to  my  desire.  Show 
me  that  it  is  possible." 

When  one  sets  himself  to  answer  this 
deeper  question  and  endeavors  clearly  to 
discern   whether   the   objections   to   belief 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     53 

in  immortality  are  conclusive,  he  faces  at 
the  beginning  this  impressive  fact,  that 
plenty  of  men  to-day,  thoroughly  familiar 
with  all  arguments  against  faith  in  the  world 
to  come,  and  able  to  weigh  their  full  sig- 
nificance, still  cherish  hopes,  quite  undis- 
mayed, of  everlasting  life.  The  fact  that 
men  like  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  in  natural  science, 
Professor  William  James  in  Psychology, 
Professor  Hermann  Lotze  in  Philosophy,  Dr. 
William  Osier  in  Medicine  have  thought  it 
reasonable  to  cherish  hopes  of  immortality, 
suggests  at  once  that  while  immortality 
may  not  be  proved,  it  certainly  has  not  been 
disproved.  It  is  evident  in  view  of  such 
men's  faith  that  nothing  which  science  or 
philosophy  has  ever  discovered  necessarily 
prevents  a  man  from  a  reasonable  hope  of  life 
to  come.  Personal  permanence  is  possible. 
This  is  well  worth  emphasizing  because 
so  often  the  reverse  is  urgently  insisted 
on ;  because  continually  we  are  reminded 
that  no  satisfactory  demonstration  of  life 
beyond  the  grave  has  ever  yet  been  found. 
There  are  weighty  considerations,  positive 
and  assuring,  which  can  be  adduced  to 
strengthen  hope  in  immortality,  but  in  the 


54        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

nature  of  the  case  it  cannot  be  proved  with 
the  certainty  of  a  mathematical  proposi- 
tion or  with  the  verifiable  accuracy  of  a 
scientific  hypothesis  concerning  tangible 
affairs.  This,  every  believer  in  the  world 
to  come  must  readily  admit,  but  coupled 
with  it  is  the  companion  fact  that  if  men 
have  found  it  difficult  satisfactorily  to 
prove  immortality,  they  have  found  it 
absolutely  impossible  to  disprove  it.  When 
Goldwin  Smith  concludes  his  essay  in  which 
he  surrenders  for  himself  all  faith  in  life 
beyond  the  grave,  he  justly  adds  these 
closing  sentences:  "All  this  is  said  on  the 
hypothesis  that  scientific  scepticism  suc- 
ceeds in  demolishing  the  hope  of  a  future 
life.  After  all,  great  is  our  ignorance,  and 
there  may  be  something  yet  behind  the 
veil."  Many  men  to-day  labor  under  the 
delusion  that  to  the  illumined  and  initiated 
man's  mortality  has  now  become  a  certain 
fact,  and  for  the  sake  of  such  it  needs  to 
be  affirmed  that  nobody,  whose  words  are 
to  be  taken  seriously,  claims  to  have  dis- 
proved life  to  come.  Although  there  are 
many  considerable  objections,  they  are 
admittedly  inconclusive. 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     55 

One  more  preliminary  matter,  worth 
remarking,  is  that  in  the  nature  of  the  case 
we  may  well  expect  belief  in  immortality 
to  be  beset  by  countless  difficulties.  Grant- 
ing that  we  are  to  live  beyond  the  grave, 
is  it  to  be  supposed  that  we  readily  can  con- 
ceive it  possible  ?  Must  not  our  minds  be 
thwarted  in  the  attempt  to  understand  the 
continuance  of  life  under  circumstances  so 
alien  from  those  in  which  life  has  always 
been  experienced,  and  must  not  our  imag- 
ination quite  break  down  in  the  endeavor 
to  conceive  how  thought  and  love  can  still 
persist,  when  the  conditions  which  have 
made  thought  and  love  a  possibility  here 
have  been  removed  ?  An  unborn  child, 
even  though  he  were  a  philosopher,  would 
have  no  easy  time  making  clear  to  himself 
the  facts  of  our  earthly  life.  He  lives 
without  air ;  how  can  he  live  with  it  ? 
He  never  saw  light ;  how  can  he  conceive 
it  ?  He  is  absolutely  dependent  upon  the 
cherishing  environment  in  which  he  finds 
himself,  and  he  cannot  well  imagine  him- 
self living  without  it.  The  crisis  of  birth 
would  seem  like  death  to  an  unborn  child, 
if  he  could  foresee  himself  wrenched  from 


56        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

all  the  conditions  which  have  hitherto 
sustained  his  life.  If  in  his  unremembered 
embryonic  days, 

"  the  days  before 
God  shut  the  doorways  of  his  head," 

a  man  had  philosophies  of  hope  or  hopeless- 
ness, they  must  have  been  strikingly  like  his 
scepticisms  and  his  hardly  cherished  expec- 
tations, when  now  he  dreams  of  life  to  come. 
So  difficult  must  we  expect  to  find  the  task 
of  understanding  the  possibility  of  person- 
ality's continuance  after  death. 

II 

One  difficulty  in  believing  in  life  eternal 
does  not  arise  from  the  nature  of  the  case, 
but  has  been  created  for  us  by  the  ignorance, 
the  dogmatism  and  the  superstition  of 
men.  In  how  many  minds  is  life  beyond 
the  grave  so  intimately  associated  with 
special  ideas  of  the  nature  of  the  future 
world,  that,  by  a  lamentable  non  sequitur, 
men  deny  immortality  because  they  can  no 
longer  hold  their  old  ways  of  conceiving  it! 
The  setting  is  rejected  and  with  it  the 
diamond  is  thrown  away.  A  cheap  and 
easy  method  of  arguing  against  life  to  come 


THE   POSSIBILITY  OF   IMMORTALITY     57 

is  to  insist  upon  some  obsolete  conception 
of  heaven  or  hell,  and  then  rail  at  so  absurd 
a  faith.  The  history  of  human  thought 
upon  the  future  world  lends  itself  to  such 
derision.  There  are  terrible  passages  in 
Christian  writers  where  the  desire  for  ven- 
geance, in  most  abhorrent  forms,  gives 
itself  vent,  the  more  unrestrained  because 
the  excuse  of  piety  is  present.  "How  shall 
I  admire,"  cries  Tertullian,  "how  laugh, 
how  rejoice,  how  exult,  when  I  behold  so 
many  proud  monarchs  and  fancied  gods 
groaning  in  the  lowest  abyss  of  darkness ; 
so  many  magistrates,  who  persecuted  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord,  liquefying  in  fiercer  fires 
than  ever  they  kindled  against  the  Chris- 
tians ;  so  many  sage  philosophers  blush- 
ing in  red-hot  flames,  with  their  deluded 
scholars ;  so  many  celebrated  poets  trem- 
bling before  the  tribunal,  not  of  Minos,  but 
of  Christ ! "  If  immortality  involves  such  a 
belief,  then  immortality  cannot  longer  be 
considered  seriously  by  any  man  of  reason- 
able mind.  We  may  well  insist,  therefore, 
that  immortality  may  be  true,  and  yet 
every  form  of  thought  in  which  mankind  has 
hitherto  conceived  it  may  be  false.     Indeed, 


58        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

when  one  considers  how  necessarily  we  use 
the  symbols  of  our  earthly  life  in  every 
endeavor  to  portray  the  life  to  come  ;  how 
in  our  loftiest  nights  of  descriptive  language 
we  have  streets  of  gold  and  gates  of  pearl, 
rivers  of  water  and  trees  with  healing 
leaves ;  how  music  itself,  the  most  natural 
symbol  of  ecstasy,  becomes  so  appallingly 
tedious  when  we  conceive  the  joy  of  heaven 
in  terms  of  it,  that,  as  Doctor  Jowett  says, 
"  To  beings  constituted  as  we  are,  the  monot- 
ony of  singing  psalms  would  be  as  great  an 
affliction  as  the  pains  of  hell  and  might  even 
be  pleasantly  interrupted  by  them  "  ;  when 
one  considers  the  utter  inconceivability  of  a 
world  in  which  we  have  never  been,  whose 
circumstances  by  the  necessity  of  the  case 
are  alien  from  anything  that  we  can  dream, 
it  is  not  simply  probable,  it  is  inevitable, 
that  all  our  thoughts  of  the  future  are  more 
unlike  the  facts  than  a  child's  house  of 
blocks  is  unlike  the  Taj  Mahal.  Wooden 
blocks  and  marble  minarets  are  at  least  in 
the  same  plane  of  existence,  but  this  world 
and  the  next  are  unimaginably  different. 
No  one  but  a  charlatan  pretends  to  know 
the  circumstances  of  the  world  to  come. 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     59 

The  best  description  of  the  future  life  yet 
written  is  to  be  found  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, ''What  eye  hath  not  seen,  what 
ear  hath  not  heard,  and  what  hath  not 
entered  into  the  heart  of  man." 

The  truth  of  immortality,  therefore,  does 
not  depend  upon  the  acceptance  of  any 
thoughts  of  it  which  ever  have  been  believed 
by  men.  The  tides  are  no  less  facts  because 
mankind  once  thought  that  they  were  caused 
by  a  leviathan  who  swallowed  up  the  sea 
and  gulped  it  out  again  ;  nor  are  the  eclipses 
a  delusion  because  the  Chinese  beat  tom- 
toms to  scare  the  dragon  that  devours  the 
sun.  No  truth  depends  upon  the  accept- 
ance of  man's  inadequate  ideas  of  it.  The 
permanence  of  personality  may  involve  the 
continued  memory  of  all  that  has  happened 
here  on  earth,  or  it  may  involve  no  more 
recollection  than  we  have  of  our  own  embry- 
onic days  or  of  our  earliest  infancy.  Our 
best  imaginations  of  the  soul's  adventure, 
when  through  death  we  pass  into  another 
world,  are  surely  all  inadequate,  perhaps 
so  inadequate  that  not  a  detail  of  them  is 
true,  and  yet  immortality  may  be  a  fact, 
and  the  soul's  adventure  no  delusion.     No 


60        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

objection  to  a  future  life,  therefore,  based 
upon  aversion  to  some  special  conception 
of  the  nature  of  the  world  to  come,  can  hold 
its  ground. 

Ill 

Perhaps  the  most  familiar  difficulty  in 
the  way  of  belief  in  immortality  is  that 
appearances  are  against  it.  Whoever  has 
seen  a  man  grow  gradually  old,  his  mind 
failing  as  his  body  drooped,  until,  the  mind 
a  blank,  the  body  slept  itself  away,  under- 
stands the  insistent  argument  of  appearance 
against  immortality.  All  that  we  can  see 
dies,  and  because  to  us  the  most  convincing 
evidence  is  the  direct  testimony  of  our 
senses,  there  is  interposed  between  our 
minds  and  faith  in  personality's  continuance 
the  obstacle  of  looks.  Our  eyes  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  dead  and  crumbling  body ; 
our  ears  bear  witness  to  the  fact  that  the 
voice  is  still ;  our  hands  bear  witness  that 
no  longer  can  response  be  won,  even  by  a 
hand  clasp,  to  our  most  urgent  and  affec- 
tionate appeals.  All  our  senses  rise  up  and 
cry  that  our  friend  has  perished.  For  most 
men,  this  simple  fact  is  the  greatest  single 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  faith. 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY    61 

This  obstacle,  however,  even  to  casual 
thought  is  manifestly  inconclusive.  If  we 
were  to  live  by  looks,  we  should  live  in 
grossest  ignorance  of  all  the  most  important 
facts,  not  only  of  the  spiritual,  but  of  the 
physical  world.  The  sun  looks  as  though 
it  were  moving,  but  it  is  not ;  the  earth 
looks  as  though  it  were  flat,  when  it  is 
round,  and  as  though  it  were  standing  still, 
when  it  is  moving  over  a  thousand  miles  a 
minute.  At  noon  the  stars  seem  to  be 
gone,  but  they  are  there.  Put  a  straight 
stick  in  a  calm  pool  and  it  appears  to  be 
crooked,  while  it  still  is  straight.  Put  a 
blue  glass  upon  one  eye  and  a  yellow  glass 
upon  the  other  and,  going  into  a  white 
room,  you  will  see  it  all  as  green.  All  prog- 
ress in  knowledge  of  the  physical  universe 
has  been  won  through  criticism  of  the 
senses'  testimony,  by  going  behind  the  way 
things  look  to  the  way  things  are. 

When  first  the  new  astronomy  proposed 
its  revolutionary  conception  of  the  world, 
endeavoring  to  persuade  men  of  a  spherical 
earth  describing  ellipses  about  the  sun,  the 
traditional  view  took  refuge  in  manifest 
appearance,  as  in  an  impregnable  citadel. 


62        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

Said  Melanchthon,  in  condemnation  of 
Copernicus,  "The  eyes  are  witnesses 
that  the  heavens  revolve  in  the  space  of 
twenty-four  hours.  But  certain  men,  either 
from  love  of  novelty  or  to  make  a  display  of 
ingenuity,  have  concluded  that  the  earth 
moves."  All  men  of  common  sense  arose 
in  contemptuous  certainty  to  assert  the 
plain  evidence  of  sight.  So  persistent  is 
the  power  of  appearance  over  the  minds  of 
men  that  even  within  the  last  half  century 
the  old  arguments  have  been  countless 
times  presented,  in  a  famous  sermon,  to 
applauding  audiences.  In  the  morning  the 
sun  is  on  one  side  of  the  house,  said  the 
preacher,  and  in  the  afternoon  it  is  on  the 
other  side,  and  since  the  house  has  not 
moved,  the  sun  has.  So  valuable  is  the 
argument  of  looks.  The  substitution  of 
judgment  for  sight,  of  verified  realities  for 
the  appearance  of  things,  is  an  achievement 
involved  with  every  step  of  progress  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  world. 

No  more  in  physical  science  than  in  the 
search  for  spiritual  truth,  may  a  man  walk 
by  sight ;  he  must  walk  by  insight.  Sight 
says  that  a  man  grows  smaller  as  he  recedes 


THE   POSSIBILITY  OF   IMMORTALITY    63 

into  the  distance ;  insight  says  he  does  not. 
Sight  sees  only  unconnected  series  of  events  ; 
insight  perceives  governing  laws,  dominant 
and  irreversible.  Sight  sees  a  flat  earth, 
circled  by  planets,  and  all  that  science 
teaches  does  not  change  the  looks  one  whit ; 
but  insight  knows  that  all  the  looks  are 
false.  So  universal  is  this  criticism  of 
sight  by  insight  that  the  presumption 
always  is  that  the  superficial  appearance  of 
anything  is  inadequate  or  quite  untrue. 
The  analogy  of  all  our  other  knowledge 
would  be  fulfilled,  if  sight  said  that  man  dies 
and  insight  declared  that  he  lives  beyond 
the  grave. 

This  general  consideration  gains  point  for 
our  problem,  when  we  perceive  that,  grant- 
ing the  truth  of  immortality,  it  stands  to 
reason  that  we  cannot  see  the  truth  with  our 
physical  eyes.  In  a  great  observatory,  when 
the  clock  that  moves  the  telescope  in  time 
with  the  movement  of  the  earth  chances 
to  stop,  it  is  possible  to  see  the  earth  go 
round.  For  then  the  stars  and  planets 
in  a  stately  march  move  across  the  face  of 
the  lens,  and  as  one  watches,  the  truth  of 
insight    is    made    clear    even    to    physical 


64        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

vision.  By  such  ingenuity  of  invention 
can  the  movement  of  the  earth  be  seen, 
but  who  can  hope  by  any  means  to  carry 
the  function  of  the  eye  out  of  the  realm 
where  it  properly  belongs,  and  expect  it  to 
bring  him  witness  of  the  life  to  come  ? 
Save  possibly  in  the  realm  of  psychic  inves- 
tigation, he  must  admit  the  utter  inappli- 
cability of  sight  to  the  problem  of  immor- 
tality. The  only  valuable  testimony  in  any 
mooted  matter  is  the  testimony  of  those 
powers  of  perception  and  of  understanding 
which  are  appropriate  to  the  case  in  hand. 
The  truth  of  immortality  is  a  matter  of 
thought  not  of  appearance,  of  reason  not  of 
looks ;  the  organ  of  perception  fitted  to 
deal  with  immortality  is  the  mind  and  not 
the  eye.  Looks,  therefore,  are  an  utterly 
inconclusive  argument,  and  he  who  dis- 
believes immortality  because  of  appearances 
is  essentially  in  the  same  intellectual  class 
as  the  young  child,  who,  after  the  fashion 
of  Alice  in  Wonderland,  supposes  that  folks 
really  grow  small  or  large  in  proportion  to 
their  distance  from  the  eye  of  the  beholder, 
because  it  looks  that  way. 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     65 

IV 

Another  obstacle  in  the  way  of  accepting 
immortality,  not  so  common  as  the  fore- 
going, but  full  of  impressiveness  for  many 
minds,  is  the  lowly  origin  of  man's  belief  in 
the  future  world.  A  primitive  savage, 
safely  housed  in  his  home  village,  goes 
forth  in  dreams  at  night  to  visit  hunting- 
grounds  or  to  wage  war  in  countries  far 
removed  from  the  place  where  his  body 
lies.  How  inevitable,  then,  is  his  assump- 
tion that  he  has  a  soul,  separable  from  his 
body,  which  can  leave  the  house  of  flesh 
at  will,  traverse  great  distances  and  return 
again  !  Such,  says  Herbert  Spencer,  is  the 
lowly  origin  of  the  idea  of  soul.  To  many 
it  is  a  disconcerting  thought  that  man's 
belief  in  his  invisible  self  takes  its  rise  so 
superstitiously  in  an  assumption  which 
now  is  negatived  by  the  psychology  of 
sleep.  And  even  more  disconcerting  is  it 
when,  upon  this  basis,  the  rise  of  belief 
in  immortality  is  circumstantially  described. 
For  when  the  primitive  savage  loses  his 
chief  in  battle,  and  on  the  very  night  after 
the  funeral  sees  in  his  dreams  the  honored 


66        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

warrior  return,  hears  him  speak  and  speaks 
to  him  in  answer,  how  inevitable  is  the  as- 
sumption that  the  soul,  absent  from  the 
body  in  death  as  in  sleep,  still  exists  and  pos- 
sesses the  powers  which  here  belonged  to  it  ! 
Therefore,  among  all  primitive  people,  the 
abode  of  the  dead  was  definitely  imagined, 
and  from  that  place  of  shadows  the  friends 
who  had  gone  came  back  in  dreams  to  warn 
and  counsel  their  descendants.  To  the 
North  American  Indian  the  abode  of  the 
dead  was  a  happy  hunting-ground  away  in 
the  west ;  to  the  Maori  it  lay  at  the  base  of  a 
great  precipice  ;  to  the  Finns  and  Australians 
the  dead  inhabited  a  distant  island ;  to  the 
Polynesians  they  dwelt  in  the  moon ;  to 
the  Mexicans  and  Peruvians  in  the  sun ; 
and,  most  popular  idea  of  all,  to  the  ancient 
Teutons,  Egyptians,  Greeks,  Romans  and 
Hebrews  a  subterranean  cavern,  from  which 
mysterious,  well-guarded  passages  led  to 
the  surface  of  the  earth,  was  the  destina- 
tion of  the  dying.  From  these  residences, 
the  shades  of  the  deceased  could  sometimes 
be  summoned  as  the  Witch  of  Endor 
summoned  Samuel ;  from  them  resurrec- 
tions oftentimes  occurred,  with  which  the 


THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  IMMORTALITY    67 

records  of  all  religions  are  replete ;  and 
continually  in  dreams  the  living  were 
counseled  by  the  dead.  Such,  say  the 
anthropologists,  is  the  origin  and  early 
history  of  man's  belief  in  immortality. 
Among  all  people  everywhere  such  ideas 
of  a  future  world  have  arisen,  and  all  our 
hopes  of  immortality  are  the  lineal  descend- 
ants of  these  early  superstitious  dreams. 
"It  is  true,"  says  Max  Muller,  "and  I 
believe  has  never  been  contested,  that  even 
the  lowest  savages  now  living  possess  words 
for  body  and  for  soul.  If  we  take  the  Tas- 
manians,  a  recently  extinct  race  of  savages, 
we  find  that,  however  much  different  observ- 
ers may  contradict  each  other  as  to  their 
intellectual  faculties  and  acquirements,  they 
all  agree  that  they  have  names  for  soul  and 
souls ;  nay,  that  they  all  believe  in  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul."  What  confidence 
can  we  place  in  a  faith  that  has  arisen 
among  all  primitive  savages  through  the 
mistaking  of  dreams  for  realities  ? 

It  is  true,  to  be  sure,  that  there  are  many 
differences  of  opinion  among  scholars 
regarding  this  fascinating  story  of  man's 
growing  belief  in  immortality,  but  it  is  clear 


68        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

that  along  some  path,  however  hard  now 
to  trace,  we  must  follow  the  faith  of  man 
in  life  eternal  back  to  lowly  origins.  Al- 
though like  a  butterfly,  with  gorgeous 
wings,  our  hope  may  now  be  free  to  fly,  it 
was  once  a  crawling  worm.  Of  that,  the 
facts  of  history,  the  evidences  of  litera- 
ture and  custom,  the  testimony  of  psychol- 
ogy definitely  assure  us.  The  reasons  on 
account  of  which  mankind  first  began  to 
believe  in  life  beyond  the  grave  are  reasons 
that  we  would  count  the  grossest  supersti- 
tions. When,  however,  this  patent  fact 
is  urged,  as  in  many  minds  it  is,  as  a  cause 
for  distrusting  immortality,  how  clearly 
inconclusive  the  objection  is  !  All  things 
have  a  lowly  origin.  Conscience  itself 
which  so  imperiously  commands  us  now ; 
capacity  for  thought  by  which  our  scien- 
tific investigations  are  themselves  made  pos- 
sible ;  all  our  faculties  and  endowments 
have  lowly  origins.  Are  ethical  ideals  to 
be  e valued,  and  their  validity  to  be  deter- 
mined, in  the  light  of  the  earliest  stages  of 
them  which  can  be  discovered  ?  Though 
each  stage  in  the  development  of  ethical 
responsibility  be  exquisitely  traced,   until 


THE   POSSIBILITY  OF   IMMORTALITY     69 

from  the  most  rudimental  form  of  moral 
feeling  to  the  loyalty  of  Savonarola  or  the 
patient  self-sacrifice  of  Lincoln  not  a  fibre 
is  missing  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  pro- 
cess, the  real  problem  has  not  thus  been 
touched.  Can  a  man  explain  an  oak  by 
tracing  it  back  into  the  acorn  ?  Does  he 
not  rather  have  the  task  of  explaining 
how  an  acorn  came  to  be  an  undeveloped 
oak  ?  The  interpretation  of  any  process 
must  be  sought  in  its  issue,  not  in  its  genesis, 
for  the  outcome  only  makes  manifest  what 
was  involved  in  the  germ.  Therefore,  could 
the  most  rudimental  moral  consciousness 
be  discovered,  its  appreciation  must  always 
be  in  terms  of  that  imperious  sense  of  obli- 
gation, which  was  inherent  in  it  and  which 
now,  developed  from  it,  has  become  the 
chiefest  concern  of  the  world.  No  tracing 
of  origins  can  effect  the  real  significance  of 
anything.  We  do  not  judge  the  man  by  the 
embryo ;  we  judge  the  embryo  by  the  man. 
When  we  perceive  that  with  the  first 
dawning  of  intelligence  men  question  about 
the  sun,  whether  it  is  the  same  orb  to-day 
that  was  here  yesterday,  or  is  some  different 
body  created  anew  daily  by  the  gods,  we 


70        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

do  not,  because  this  is  the  beginning  of 
astronomy,  rule  out  of  court  our  Galileos 
and  Keplers,  taunting  them  with  the  abo- 
riginal beginnings  of  their  science.  Rather 
we  watch  with  pride  the  dawning  mind  of 
man,  dimly  perceiving  problems  on  which 
the  intelligence  of  the  wisest  of  the  race 
shall  yet  exert  itself,  and  vaguely  reaching 
for  solutions,  which,  however  primitive, 
are  prophetic  of  centuries  of  growing  knowl- 
edge. When  cathedrals  are  outlawed  be- 
cause our  aboriginal  ancestors  built  only 
straw  huts ;  when  Bach  and  Mozart  are 
laughed  at  because  early  music  was  coaxed 
from  conch-shells  or  beaten  sticks ;  when 
poetry  and  love,  science  and  education, 
are  railed  at  because  of  their  crude  origins,  — 
then  man's  faith  in  immortality  may  trem- 
ble before  the  undeveloped  ways  in  which 
the  earliest  men  we  know  conceived  it. 
We  must  not  compel  larks  to  live  under 
water  because  their  forefathers  were  fishes. 

V 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  has  its  more 
discouraging  effect  on  man's  belief  in  immor- 
tality, not  when  it  traces  the  rise  in  the 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     71 

human  mind  of  faith  in  the  future  world, 
but  when  it  traces  the  rise  of  the  human 
mind  itself.  When  science  discloses  to 
us  a  vast  physical  universe,  unfolding  in 
unimaginable  ways  through  age-long  cos- 
mic changes,  and,  in  one  corner  of  this 
immeasurable  expanse,  puts  man  upon  a 
world  so  small  that  its  total  conflagration 
would  be  invisible  to  the  strongest  telescope 
upon  the  nearest  star,  it  prepares  us  for  a 
disparagement  of  man  that  makes  his 
ultimate  annihilation  seem  entirely  reason- 
able. An  angel  commissioned  by  God  to 
discover  the  earth  amid  the  innumerable 
hosts  of  stars,  says  an  astronomer,  would 
be  like  a  child  sent  out  upon  a  vast  prairie, 
to  find  a  speck  of  sand  at  the  root  of  some 
blade  of  grass.  When  on  this  insignificant 
planet  science  pictures  a  process  of  growth 
that  has  lifted  inorganic  matter  into  organic 
life,  has  moved  organic  life  from  plants 
through  ascending  series  of  animal  forms  to 
the  erect  mammals,  and  has  at  last  raised 
this  organic  life  in  man  to  the  functions  of 
thought  and  speech  and  character,  science, 
so  emphasizing  our  kinship  with  the  brutes 
and  our  personalities'  intimate  dependence 


72        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

on  our  physical  structure,  has  made  immor- 
tality seem  to  multitudes  utterly  impos- 
sible. Here  we  face  an  objection  to  faith 
in  the  future  life,  in  comparison  with  which 
the  obstacles  which  we  have  hitherto  con- 
sidered are  superficial.  Man  is  a  lineal 
descendant  of  the  beasts ;  as  they  are 
dependent  on  their  bodies  for  life  and  all 
its  functions,  so  is  he ;  and  his  capacity  for 
thought,  however  far-ranging  and  exalted, 
has  grown  like  a  blossom  out  of  that  won- 
derfully organized  stalk,  his  brain.  Such 
is  the  picture  which  in  many  minds  to-day 
creates  an  insuperable  objection  to  faith  in 
immortality. 

In  mitigation  of  the  effect  of  this  idea  of 
man's  origin,  it  is  worth  noting  that  the 
evolution  of  the  race  does  not  create  a  sin- 
gle difficulty  in  the  way  of  believing  in  a 
self,  separable  from  the  body,  that  is  not 
really  present  in  the  evolution  of  each  indi- 
vidual. Whatever  may  be  the  facts  about 
the  race,  every  one  of  us  evolved  from  a 
primal  cell.  All  the  mystery  of  the  race's 
origin,  and  all  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
believing  in  an  immortal  self,  are  present  in 
the  familiar  facts  of  each  man's  develop- 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     73 

ment  from  his  conception  to  his  maturity. 
From  an  original  cell,  through  the  compli- 
cated building  of  physical  structure,  until 
at  last  the  capacity  for  thought  emerges, 
and  personality  is  slowly  gained  as  the  brain 
is  organized,  —  such  is  the  life-story  of 
each  individual  and  of  the  race.  In  any 
text -book  on  theology  one  will  find  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  separable  soul  discussed,  in 
view  of  the  evolution  not  of  the  race  but  of 
the  individual.  Four  theories  have  been  ad- 
vanced to  explain  the  presence  of  the  spirit- 
ual element  in  man,  and  its  relationship 
with  his  growing  physical  organism :  that 
the  soul  is  preexist ent,  and  that  when  the 
body  is  prepared  the  soul  inhabits  it ;  that 
God  creates  the  soul  complete  and  places 
it  in  a  body  prepared  for  its  residence; 
that  soul  and  body  together  grow,  the  first 
developing  as  the  second  gives  it  opportu- 
nity ;  and  last,  that  the  body  creates  the  soul 
and  functions  mentally  on  one  side  as  it 
does  physically  upon  the  other.  Such  are 
the  speculations  with  which  men  have 
endeavored  to  explain  the  mysterious  co- 
ordination of  mind  and  brain.  "When  did 
the    race    become    immortal?"    asks    the 


74        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

materialist  in  derision,  as  he  points  out  the 
imperceptible  gradations  by  which  animal 
existence  has  passed  into  human  life.  But 
that  same  question  has  always  been  appli- 
cable to  the  growing  embryo  or  the  new- 
born babe.  When  does  any  man  become 
immortal  ?  Such  difficulties,  immense  and 
elemental,  are  all  present  in  the  plain  fact  of 
each  individual's  growth  from  a  primal 
cell,  and  the  evolution  of  the  race  adds  not 
a  single  essential  factor  to  the  problem. 
The  gradual  development  of  all  mankind 
from  lowly  forms  of  life  simply  presents  in 
general  the  same  question  which  in  par- 
ticular the  mind  of  man  has  always  faced, 
when  he  has  considered  the  relation  of  his 
invisible  self  to  his  mysteriously  evolving 
body. 

When,  therefore,  we  grant  all  that  scien- 
tists affirm  concerning  the  evolution  of  the 
race,  we  are  facing  the  same  elemental 
facts,  in  the  light  of  which  immortality  has 
always  been  discussed.  Personality  and 
body,  whether  in  single  men  or  in  mankind 
as  a  whole,  grow  in  intimate  correlation. 
They  mutually  condition  each  other.  The 
wisdom  of  the  sage  is  not  expected  in  a 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     75 

child  because  the  brain  is  not  yet  organized 
to  make  it  possible,  and  in  the  newly  born 
we  know  that  there  is  nothing  to  be  looked 
for  save  capacity  for  sensation  and  response 
to  simple  outward  stimuli.  Some  form  of 
mutual  dependence  exists  between  the  mind 
and  brain,  and  upon  the  nature  of  that  de- 
pendence rests  the  possibility  of  immortal 
life.  Does  the  organization  of  the  brain 
produce  personality,  or  does  personality 
endeavor  to  express  itself  through  brain  ? 
The  effect  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  upon 
the  problem  of  immortality  is  simply  to 
drive  home  with  more  urgent  emphasis  the 
ancient  question  upon  the  answer  to  which 
belief  in  life  everlasting  always  waits  :  what 
is  the  nature  of  the  mind's  dependence 
upon  the  brain  ? 

Indeed,  so  far  are  the  facts  of  racial  evo- 
lution from  being  conclusive  against  life 
to  come,  that  many  of  our  most  scholarly 
and  thoughtful  men  have  found  in  the  impli- 
cations of  evolution  a  strong  argument  for 
immortality.  The  manifest  trend  of  the 
whole  creative  process  is  toward  the  build- 
ing of  personality.  The  story  of  humanity's 
evolving   life,   traced  backward   from   the 


76        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

present  toward  the  unknown  beginnings, 
presents  a  record  of  successive  derivations 
from  forms  of  existence  ever  simpler  and  less 
complicated  ;  but  the  same  story  traced  from 
the  remotest  origins  onward  toward  to-day, 
presents  a  record  of  ascent,  in  which  all 
physical  changes  seem  to  be  intended  for  a 
psychical  result.  God  in  evolution  no  less 
than  in  Genesis,  appears  to  be  taking  the 
dust  of  the  earth,  and  breathing  into  it  the 
breath  of  life  until  man  becomes  a  living 
soul.  If  a  man  insists  that  there  is  no 
purpose  in  the  universe  at  all,  that  the 
entire  process  means  nothing,  he  must  do 
it  now  not  alone  in  the  face  of  an  opposing 
theology,  but  in  the  face  of  an  evolutionary 
science  which  presents  an  ascending  series 
of  physical  forms,  ending  with  a  being  in 
whom  evolution  has  changed  from  progress 
in  physical  structure  to  growth  in  intelli- 
gence and  character.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  man  believes  that  the  universe  means 
anything,  he  must,  in  the  light  of  manifest 
facts,  believe  that  it  has  been  aiming  at 
personality.  If,  then,  the  entire  labor  of 
the  universe,  culminating  in  spiritual  per- 
sons, is  to  be  thrown  away  and  nothing 


THE   POSSIBILITY  OF   IMMORTALITY    77 

come  of  it,  we  indeed  are  "put  to  permanent 
intellectual  confusion."  Such  considera- 
tions as  this  have  made  evolution  the 
strong  ally  of  belief  in  immortality  to  many 
minds.  At  least  it  is  evident  that  the  facts 
of  evolution  are  not  conclusive  against 
immortality.  Professor  Fiske,  one  of  Amer- 
ica's leading  evolutionists,  states  the  truth 
with  less  restraint.  "The  materialistic  as- 
sumption," he  says,  "that  the  life  of  the 
soul  ends  with  the  life  of  the  body,  is  per- 
haps the  most  colossal  instance  of  baseless 
assumption  that  is  known  to  the  history  of 
philosophy." 

VI 

We  come,  therefore,  in  our  discussion  of 
the  possibility  of  life  beyond  the  grave,  to 
that  difficult  question  in  which  all  other  ob- 
jections to  immortality  have  their  culmina- 
tion :  is  not  the  mind  absolutely  dependent 
on  the  brain  ?  Not  the  evolutionary  doc- 
trine, but  the  modern  laboratory  study  of 
the  physical  basis  of  personality,  most  urges 
this  query  on  us.  There  is  no  longer  any 
doubt  about  the  facts  to  be  interpreted. 
A  continuous  layer  of  gray  matter,  varying 


78        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

in  thickness  from  one-twelfth  to  one-eighth 
of  an  inch,  and  folded  upon  itself  "as  one 
would  crumple  up  a  handkerchief,"  forms 
the  outer  surface  of  our  brains.  No  think- 
ing is  ever  done  by  men  without  the 
cooperation  of  this  delicate  and  highly  or- 
ganized nervous  tissue.  Each  psychical 
function  has  some  special  lobe  or  convolution 
in  the  gray  matter,  without  which  the  cor- 
responding mental  activity  is  utterly  impos- 
sible. In  many  cases  the  exact  location  of 
the  sensitive  surface,  where  the  special 
forms  of  intellectual  activity  are  carried 
on,  is  known  to  the  psychologists.  They 
know  the  area  in  the  brain  with  which  we 
hear,  the  area  with  which  we  see ;  they  know 
the  lobes  by  which  we  move  our  arms  and 
legs,  our  lips  and  tongues  and  eyes ;  they 
know  the  convolution  where  the  function  of 
speech  is  carried  on  and  without  which 
abstract  thinking  is  impossible.  They  can 
even  distinguish  the  surface  with  which  we 
hear  words  from  the  surface  with  which 
we  read  them.  Nothing  is  clearer  than  that 
for  every  functioning  of  the  minds  of  men 
there  is  a  corresponding  molecular  activity 
in  the  gray  matter  of  the  brain.     The  con- 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY     79 

elusion  at  first  seems  inevitable,  that  the 
mind  is  absolutely  dependent  on  the  physi- 
cal structure  and  is  inseparable  from  it. 

It  is  well  to  note  that  as  the  doctrine  of 
racial  evolution  only  makes  more  urgent  a 
problem  always  faced  by  those  who  watched 
the  development  of  any  individual,  so  here 
the  discoveries  of  physiological  psychology 
only  assert  with  greater  particularity  and 
assurance  what  is  the  common  experience 
of  every  man.  We  know  that  we  are  de- 
pendent on  our  brains.  Every  fever  that 
congests  our  nervous  systems ;  every  para- 
lytic stroke  that  attacking  the  right  hemis- 
phere of  the  brain  cripples  the  left  side  of 
the  body ;  every  illness  that  reduces  our 
power  of  thought  by  disabling  the  machin- 
ery with  which  our  thinking  must  be  done, 
says  in  popular  speech  what  the  psycholo- 
gists assert  in  scientific  terms,  that  we  are 
dependent  on  our  brains.  When  a  good 
character  is  altered  by  a  blow  upon  the 
skull,  and  is  restored  again  by  surgeons  who 
trephine  the  bone  and  relieve  the  press- 
ure upon  the  convolution  underneath, 
that  fact  only  makes  more  vivid  and  explicit 
what  every  ordinary  man  has  known,  that 


80       ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

the  healthy  condition  of  his  nervous  system 
is  prerequisite  to  a  healthy  personality. 
The  essential  problem  has  not  been  altered 
by  the  modern  discoveries  of  the  physio- 
logical investigators  ;  it  has  only  been  made 
more  manifest,  more  circumstantial  and 
more  urgent.  The  intimate  relationship 
between  the  mind  and  the  brain  has  been 
so  illustrated  in  detail,  so  proved  by  experi- 
ments verifiable  and  clear,  that  the  modern 
man  has  come  to  say  with  a  definiteness  and 
an  assurance  which  his  own  experience  never 
would  have  wrought  in  him,  that  his  per- 
sonality is  absolutely  dependent  on  his 
brain.  How  can  we  be  separable  selves, 
when  we  and  our  nervous  systems  are  so 
intermeshed  and  apparently  indissoluble  ? 
Our  initial  fear  that  the  dependence  of 
our  minds  upon  our  brains  must  conclu- 
sively banish  the  hope  of  immortality  is 
mitigated  somewhat  when  we  turn  to  books, 
such  as  Doctor  Thompson's  work  on  "Brain 
and  Personality."  Here  is  a  man  who 
knows  the  facts,  and  in  the  elucidation  of 
them  and  the  practice  of  the  inferences 
drawn  from  them,  has  played  no  inconsider- 
able  part.     So  far,   however,   is  he  from 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY    81 

being  convinced  that  they  imply  the  anni- 
hilation of  a  man  at  death,  that  to  him  the 
details  of  the  brain's  organization  and  the 
way  in  which  the  centres  of  psychical  func- 
tioning are  built  up  in  the  gray  matter  of 
its  surface,  seem  clearly  to  indicate,  not  that 
the  brain  makes  the  person,  but  that  the 
person  is  using  the  brain  as  his  instrument 
and  is  educating  it  to  serve  his  will.  If  the 
gray  matter  made  the  person,  he  argues,  the 
more  gray  matter  the  more  possibility  of 
personal  power.  But  on  the  contrary,  not 
only  are  many  of  the  greatest  minds  asso- 
ciated with  brains  of  less  than  medium 
weight,  but  in  every  brain  only  one  hemis- 
phere is  used  for  thinking,  as  one  eye  may  be 
used  for  seeing,  so  that  a  paralytic  stroke 
may  utterly  destroy  one  hemisphere,  and 
the  man  still  think  on  as  clearly  as  he 
thought  before.  The  gray  matter  does  not 
make  the  person,  he  asserts,  the  person 
organizes  a  small  portion  of  the  gray  mat- 
ter, and  uses  it  as  an  instrument  for  think- 
ing. However  one  may  disagree  with  special 
aspects  of  this  argument,  or  however  one 
may  be  unable  to  comprehend  the  argu- 
ment at  all,  when  one  considers  the  eminent 


82        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

investigators  whose  knowledge  of  the  facts 
is  comprehensive  and  exact,  and  whose 
hope  of  immortality  is  yet  unshaken,  he 
sees  that  there  must  be  a  possible  inter- 
pretation of  the  mind's  dependence  on  the 
brain,  which  does  not  necessarily  negative 
the  hope  of  life  eternal. 

That  the  present  contingency  of  a  living 
being  upon  a  physical  structure  does  not 
by  itself  argue  that  such  a  relationship  must 
exist  forever,  is  clear.  The  worm  in  the 
cocoon,  or  the  babe  in  the  womb,  or  the 
bird  in  the  egg,  depends  on  the  warm  and 
nourishing  environment  in  which  he  is 
enclosed,  and  with  which  he  is  connected 
by  ties  that  condition  the  possibility  of 
his  existence.  But  this  present  relation- 
ship is  not  permanent.  A  life  is  being 
wrought  in  the  temporary  matrix  which 
some  day  will  outgrow  the  old  necessities. 
Such  an  analogy  is  no  argument  at  all  for 
the  immortality  of  man,  but  it  is  a  clear  dis- 
closure of  the  fact  that  the  absolute  depen- 
dence of  life  upon  a  physical  structure  may 
be  of  such  a  nature  that  the  dependence 
is  a  temporary  preparation  for  a  future 
independence. 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY    83 

This  suggestion  is  entirely  pertinent  to 
the  problem  of  man's  future  life.  The 
present  contingency  of  mind  on  brain  nega- 
tives the  hope  of  immortality  only  under  one 
condition :  that  the  brain  creates  the  mind. 
If  the  man's  invisible  self  is  conditioned 
by  his  physical  structure  as  the  blossom  is 
by  its  stalk  and  cusp,  then  his  annihilation 
is  assured ;  but  what  if  the  dependence 
of  his  personality  upon  his  nervous  system 
were  like  the  dependence  of  a  telegrapher 
upon  his  instruments  ?  Every  fact  known 
to  science  is  at  least  as  satisfactorily 
explained  by  the  latter  idea  as  by  the 
former.  In  either  case  any  injury  to  the 
physical  structure  means  a  corresponding 
disability  to  the  life  that  is  dependent  on  it 
for  its  expression.  A  man  cannot  see  with- 
out eyes,  but  the  eyes  are  not  the  man ; 
he  cannot  see  without  the  optic  nerve,  but 
the  nerve  is  not  the  man ;  he  cannot  see 
without  the  visual  lobe  of  the  brain,  but 
the  lobe  is  not  the  man.  Why  are  they  not 
alike  instruments  which  the  man  uses, 
upon  which  his  present  activities  are  con- 
tingent, but  apart  from  which  he  can  still 
exist  ?     For  all  that  any  investigation  ever 


84        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

has  ascertained,  such  may  be  the  case. 
Science  has  discovered  only  that  for  every 
activity  of  the  mind  there  is  a  corresponding 
molecular  change  in  the  brain,  and  that  is 
equally  true  whether  we  regard  the  brain 
as  an  agent  that  creates  the  mind,  or  as  an 
instrument  on  which  the  mind  is  playing. 
If  a  man  is  riding  in  his  limousine,  he  is 
dependent  on  the  windows  for  his  impression 
of  the  outside  world.  If  the  glass  is  cov- 
ered by  curtains  or  besmeared  with  mud, 
he  cannot  see.  All  that  happens  to  the 
windows  affects  his  power  either  to  receive 
impressions  from  without  or  to  signal  to  his 
friends.  Yet  the  man  is  not  thereby  proved 
to  be  the  glass,  nor  is  it  clear  that  he  may 
not  some  day  leave  his  limousine  and  see 
all  the  better  because  the  old  mediums  are 
now  discarded.  A  man's  dependence  on 
his  instruments  can  never  be  used  to  prove 
that  he  is  his  instruments  or  is  created  by 
them.  Every  man  who  is  acquainted  with 
the  exact  discoveries  of  physiological  psy- 
chology, understands  that  they  leave  the 
question  of  immortality  where  they  found 
it,  unanswered  still.  Science  is  sure  that 
thought  and  the  brain's  activity  now  go 


THE   POSSIBILITY  OF   IMMORTALITY    85 

hand  in  hand ;  but  whether  the  brain  is  the 
creator  of  the  mind  or  is  simply  the  tem- 
porary instrument  of  mind,  must  be  deter- 
mined by  considerations  with  which  the 
physiological  laboratory  cannot  deal.  All 
objections  to  eternal  life,  based  upon  the 
present  dependence  of  the  mind  upon  the 
body,  are  admittedly  inconclusive.  "How 
much  does  this  argument  amount  to," 
asks  Professor  Fiske,  "as  against  the  belief 
that  the  soul  survives  the  body?  The 
answer  is,  Nothing  !  absolutely  nothing  ! 
It  not  only  fails  to  disprove  the  validity  of 
the  belief,  but  it  does  not  raise  even  the 
slightest  prima  facie  presumption  against 
it." 

VII 

Many  men  compelled  by  the  testimony 
of  the  experts  and  the  obvious  evidence  of 
the  facts,  to  acknowledge  that  even  this 
strongest  argument  against  immortality 
is  indecisive,  take  final  refuge,  as  an  expla- 
nation of  their  disbelief,  in  the  incon- 
ceivable mysteriousness  of  an  invisible  self 
using  a  visible  body.  The  unimaginable 
nature  of  such  a  relationship  between  the 


86        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

mind  and  brain  urges  them  to  deny  its 
possibility.  Granted  that,  as  a  matter  of 
theory,  science  never  has  proved,  and  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  never  can  prove,  the 
indissoluble  connection  between  the  body 
and  the  self ;  yet  the  ties  that  bind  the  two 
are  so  obviously  close  and  intimate  that 
one  cannot  easily  conceive  them  torn  asun- 
der. A  disembodied  self  is  an  unpictur- 
able  thing.  What  I  would  be  without  my 
instruments  of  perception  and  my  nervous 
organism,  is  beyond  my  power  to  appre- 
hend, and  what  is  unimaginable  can  only 
with  difficulty  be  believed.  But  if  the  brain 
conceived  as  the  instrument  of  personality 
is  an  enigma,  what  is  the  mystery  of  the 
brain,  conceived  as  the  creator  of  person- 
ality !  That  is  the  alternative.  Either 
mind  uses  brain  or  is  produced  by  it. 
If  our  physical  structure  is  not  the  instru- 
ment on  which  we  play,  our  physical  struc- 
ture is  our  originator,  and  we  are  creatures 
whose  builder  and  maker  is  brain.  If, 
therefore,  the  difficulty  of  conceiving  a 
mind  that  uses  gray  matter  as  a  means  of 
thinking  seems  insuperable,  it  is  well  to 
face  the  alternative,  and  see  the  mystery 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY    87 

which  we  necessarily  prefer  when  we,  denying 
that  personality  uses  flesh,  thereby  assert 
that  flesh  produces  personality.  How  much 
less  mysterious  is  gray  matter  creating 
mind,  than  is  mind  making  an  instrument 
of  gray  matter  ? 

The  lobe  of  the  brain  with  which  the 
function  of  thought  is  associated  is  made 
up  of  a  definite  number  of  physical  cells, 
reticulated  by  innumerable  nervous  av- 
enues of  communication.  How  can  these 
cells  be  pictured  as  conspiring  to  write 
"Hamlet"  or  to  compose  the  sonatas  of 
Beethoven  ?  Has  each  cell  a  mental 
aspect  ?  If  each  cell  has,  how  can  it  com- 
municate its  mental  power,  and  arrange 
with  its  neighbors  so  to  contribute  theirs, 
that  altogether  they  shall  produce  an 
Emancipation  Proclamation  or  a  deter- 
mination to  die  on  Calvary  rather  than  be 
untrue  ?  The  thing  is  inconceivable.  It 
is  not  the  brain  as  a  whole  that  is  associated 
with  thinking ;  it  is  a  special  lobe  in  one 
hemisphere  of  the  brain ;  and  because  that 
lobe  is  compounded  of  distinguishable  cells, 
the  function  of  the  lobe  must  be  a  sum  made 
up  of  the  functions  of  the  parts.     In  the 


88       ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

last  analysis,  therefore,  we  have  a  single 
cell,  made  out  of  subtile  matter  and  infin- 
itesimally  minute,  and  in  the  physical  vi- 
bration of  this  cell  and  others  like  it,  lies  the 
potency  that  has  written  all  our  literature, 
achieved  all  our  knowledge,  composed  all 
our  music,  dreamed  all  our  ideals,  and 
attained  all  our  spiritual  character.  How 
incredible  a  mystery  is  this  ! 

It  is  sufficiently  strange  that  man  should 
build  a  violin  and  play  upon  it,  but  that  a 
violin  should  fortuitously  build  itself,  organ- 
ize its  atoms,  shape  its  body  and  make  taut 
its  strings,  and  then  with  no  one  to  play 
upon  it,  should  play  upon  itself  Joachim's 
"Hungarian  Concerto,"  how  shall  a  man 
make  that  seem  reasonable  ?  Just  such  an 
unimaginable  thing  must  one  believe,  who 
asserts  that  brain  creates  the  mind.  This 
affirmation  of  materialism  is  the  one  unbe- 
lievable mystery.  A  ' '  mobile  cosmic  ether,'* 
as  Haeckel  calls  it,  that  can  arrange  itself 
into  mothers  and  music  and  the  laughter  of 
children  at  play:  a  "mobile  cosmic  ether" 
that  can  compose  itself  into  Isaiah  and 
Jesus  and  Livingston  and  Phillips  Brooks ; 
a  "mobile  cosmic  ether"  that  can  organize 


THE   POSSIBILITY  OF  IMMORTALITY    89 

itself  into  the  Psalms  of  David  and  the 
dramas  of  Shakespeare,  into  Magna  Chart  as 
and  Declarations  of  Independence ;  what 
intellectual  gymnastics  must  a  man  per- 
form to  make  such  a  process  thinkable  ? 
And  this  materialistic  explanation  of  per- 
sonality nowhere  appears  so  incompre- 
hensible as  when  from  vague  generalities 
like  Haeckel's  ether  it  is  driven  to  the  plain 
assertion  that  a  visible,  ponderable,  gray 
tissue  with  its  little  cells  is  the  transient 
creator  of  all  the  character  and  intelligence 
of  the  race.  If  one  desires  to  avoid  mystery, 
he  does  ill  to  deny  that  mind  uses  brain, 
in  order  that  he  may  assert  that  brain 
creates  mind. 

Indeed,  the  consequences  of  affirming  that 
flesh,  however  finely  organized,  is  the 
producer  of  personality,  are  far  wider  than 
the  comparatively  insignificant  matter  of 
mystery.  Everything  physical  always 
tends  to  act  along  the  path  of  least  resist- 
ance. In  a  world,  therefore,  where  mind  is 
the  creature  of  nervous  organization,  when 
a  man  asserts  a  universal  truth,  such  as 
that  the  shortest  distance  between  two 
points  is  a  straight  line  joining  them,  he 


go        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

is  not  saying  this  because  it  is  true,  but 
because  the  molecules  of  his  brain  al- 
ways find  that  the  path  of  least  resistance 
leads  them  to  function  towards  such  an 
affirmation.  If  truth  is  thus  a  matter  of  the 
physical  paths  of  least  resistance  in  the 
brain,  one  can  readily  understand  the 
suspended  judgment  of  the  man,  of  whom 
Macaulay  tells,  who  was  inclined  to  think 
that  parallel  lines  would  never  meet,  but 
who  would  not  be  dogmatic  on  the  subject. 
A  man  may  well  suspend  his  judgment  on 
every  axiom,  if  axioms  are  simply  nervous 
discharges  along  lines  of  least  resistance. 
This  unaccountable  enigma  confronts  us  in 
a  world  where  mind  is  made  by  brain,  that 
everybody  who  can  think  at  all  believes  that 
three  times  three  make  nine.  How  did  it 
happen  in  a  universe  where  no  one  ever 
thought  this  truth  until  man  thought  it, 
that  the  material  substance  of  human 
brains  has  so  organized  itself  that  it  always 
finds  the  path  of  least  resistance  leading  to 
this  conclusion  ?  For  in  such  a  world,  all 
truth,  as  well  as  all  beauty  and  goodness, 
is  reduced  to  a  question  of  brain  avenues 
and  cellular  functions.     When  Haydn  com- 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   IMMORTALITY    91 

posed  "The  Creation,"  saying,  "Not  from 
me,  but  from  above  it  all  has  come,"  he 
was  mistaken  about  the  source  of  his 
inspiration,  for  the  fact  was  that  his  gray 
matter  had  merely  executed  a  neurosis 
along  the  lines  of  least  resistance  in  the 
brain ;  when  John  Napier  discovered  the 
process  of  logarithms,  it  was  because  his 
unusually  agile  brain  cells  achieved  a  for- 
tunate manoeuvre  whereby  they  reached 
an  unforeseen  result ;  and  when  Latimer, 
burning  at  the  stake  in  Oxford  Square, 
said  to  his  companion  in  martyrdom,  "Be 
of  good  comfort,  Master  Ridley,  and  play 
the  man.  We  shall  this  day  light  such  a 
candle,  by  God's  grace,  in  England,  as  I 
trust  shall  never  be  put  out,"  the  cause 
was  that  by  a  happy  conspiracy  among  the 
molecules  in  his  Brocca  convolution,  they 
had  succeeded  in  pooling  their  psychical 
aspects  and  producing  the  heroic  words. 
Perhaps  most  strange  of  all,  the  hope  of 
immortality  itself,  that  has  made  men  die 
singing,  that  has  inspired  poems  like  "In 
Memoriam"  and  music  like  Christendom's 
Easter  hymns  and  anthems,  and  that  into 
the  commonplace   endurance   of  innumer- 


92        ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY 

able  humble  men  has  put  cheer  and  courage, 
is  at  bottom  nothing  but  an  explosion  of 
excitable  nerve  cells.  This  interpretation 
of  the  beauty,  knowledge,  goodness  and 
faith  of  mankind  cannot  be  disproved. 
As  Paulsen  says,  "The  proposition  that 
thoughts  are  in  reality  nothing  but  move- 
ments in  the  brain,  that  feelings  are  nothing 
but  bodily  processes  in  the  vaso-motor 
system,  is  absolutely  irrefutable ;  not  be- 
cause it  is  true,  however,  but  because  it  is 
meaningless.  The  absurd  has  this  advan- 
tage in  common  with  truth,  that  it  cannot  be 
refuted."  At  any  rate,  the  old  fable  of 
the  fish  that  leaped  from  the  frying-pan 
into  the  fire,  because  the  pan  was  hot,  is  a 
mild  simile  for  the  estate  of  the  man  who 
gives  up  belief  in  immortality  and  accepts 
its  alternative,  because  immortality  is  mys- 
terious. One  is  reminded,  in  this  wild 
attempt  to  escape  mystery,  of  George 
Sand's  character,  Gribouille,  "who  threw 
herself  into  the  river  at  the  approach  of  rain, 
for  fear  of  getting  wet  ! " 

When  thus  a  man  has  canvassed  all  the 
standard  objections  to  belief  in  personal 
permanence,  he  finds  them  manifestly  incon- 


THE   POSSIBILITY   OF  IMMORTALITY    93 

elusive.  So  far  as  anything  that  science 
has  discovered  is  concerned,  immortality 
is  as  possible  as  it  is  significant.  The  as- 
surance of  its  truth  must  rest  on  consider- 
ations that  overpass  the  boundaries  of 
scientific  investigation,  but  when  the  stream 
of  a  human  life  turns  the  great  bend  in  its 
banks  which  we  call  death,  and  passes  out 
of  sight,  there  is  no  fact  known  to  man 
which  negatives  our  right  to  seek  those 
further  reasons  which  may  assure  us  that 
the  stream  flows  on. 


CHAPTER  III 
The  Assurance  of  Immortality 


The  bare  possibility  that  after  death  we 
may  continue  to  exist  falls  far  short  of 
satisfying  the  interest  of  men  in  immor- 
tality. There  may  be  some,  indeed,  whose 
desires  for  life  eternal  are  so  strong  that 
when  the  arguments  against  it  are  proved 
inconclusive,  their  hearts,  like  coiled  springs 
released,  leap  out  in  confident  affirmation 
that  the  possible  is  true.  Such  an  attitude  is 
not  altogether  unreasonable,  for  when  a  great 
life,  pulsating  with  energy  and  hope,  bur- 
dened with  powers  but  half -expressed,  aspir- 
ing with  a  reach  that  is  larger  than  its  grasp, 
suddenly  passes  from  our  sight,  the  respon- 
sibility of  proof  seems  to  rest  with  those, 
who,  in  the  face  of  mankind's  universal 
hope,  assert  that  the  life  has  been  anni- 
hilated. If,  therefore,  such  proof  is  quite 
impossible,  if  all  the  nooks  and  crannies  of 
the  mental  universe  hide  not  a  single  fact 

94 


ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY        95 

that  demonstrates  the  dissolution  of  the 
personality,  a  man  may  well  feel  the  strong 
presumption  of  probability  that  the  life 
goes  on.  More  cautious  minds,  however, 
will  not  be  greatly  influenced  by  this 
consideration.  If  the  bare  possibility  of 
life  eternal  is  all  that  they  can  affirm,  their 
resultant  attitude  will  be  not  positive  confi- 
dence but  agnosticism.  However  much  they 
may  desire  to  be  convinced  of  immortality, 
they  will  feel  themselves  in  honor  bound  not 
to  go  beyond  the  evidence. 

Moreover,  the  bare  possibility  that  man 
may  live  through  death  is  insufficient, 
because  the  profoundest  meanings  which 
faith  in  immortality  possesses  for  the  lives 
of  men  cannot  belong  to  one  who,  perceiv- 
ing that  existence  beyond  the  grave  is  pos- 
sible or  even  probable,  is  yet  not  positively 
convinced  that  it  is  true.  If  belief  in  per- 
sonal permanence  concerned  only  a  myste- 
rious future,  uncertainty  about  it  would  be 
of  no  great  moment,  and  the  possibility  of 
its  truth  might  serve  most  of  the  needs 
which  could  be  met  by  confident  assurance. 
Life  beyond  the  grave,  however,  is  not  an 
artificial  addition  to  this  present  existence, 


96       ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY 

but  a  natural  continuation  of  it ;  if  a  man 
is  immortal  at  all,  he  is  immortal  now. 
Eternal  life,  to  those  who  are  destined  to 
live  forever,  is  not  a  possession  conferred 
at  death,  but  a  present  endowment,  the  full 
appreciation  of  which  incalculably  deepens, 
beautifies  and  solemnizes  the  meaning  of 
our  most  common  days.  For  if  a  man 
is  immortal,  he  now  has  entered  on  an 
endless  course  of  spiritual  growth  with 
limitless  possibilities  latent  in  it ;  he  has 
now  begun  a  journey  in  which  death  is  an 
incident,  a  life  story  which  the  grave  will 
simply  punctuate  to  more  exalted  mean- 
ing. If  this  faith  in  life  eternal  as  a  present 
possession  is  to  be  so  apprehended  that  it 
will  make  a  vital  difference  to  character, 
if  a  man  to-day  is  to  take  advantage  of  the 
comforts,  sanctions,  motives  and  hopes 
which  properly  belong  to  an  immortal  per- 
sonality, until,  aware  that  he  is  deathless, 
he  begins  now  to  live  the  kind  of  life  that 
it  will  be  worth  his  while  to  live  forever, 
immortality  must  be  to  him  not  a  proba- 
bility but  an  assured  conviction.  Confident 
belief  in  immortality  is  important  for  this 
fundamental  reason,  that  upon  it  depends 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY        97 

the  practice  of  immortality  now.  No  man 
will  really  live  as  though  he  were  an  eternal 
person  until  he  is  assured  that  such  an 
interpretation  of  his  life  is  true. 

Now,  when  a  man  seeks  positive  and 
assuring  reasons  for  faith  in  personal  per- 
manence, he  may  well  be  discouraged  at  the 
beginning  by  the  unanimity  with  which  men 
agree,  sometimes  triumphantly  and  some- 
times reluctantly,  that  immortality  cannot 
be  proved.  To  be  sure,  some  psychic  in- 
vestigators, with  more  or  less  confidence, 
assert  that  they  have  held  communion  with 
the  dead.  Facts  which  suggest  spiritual 
intercourse  between  the  other  world  and 
this,  and  which  have  been  impressive 
enough  tentatively  to  convince  Sir  William 
Crookes,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  and  men  of 
like  scientific  temperament  and  training, 
may  not  cavalierly  be  laughed  out  of 
court,  but  such  evidence  is  too  difficult  of 
access,  too  dubious  at  present  in  its  impli- 
cations, to  assure  any  considerable  number 
of  people  that  the  world  to  come  is  true. 
It  may  be  that  great  light  will  break  upon 
us  from  this  quarter,  and  that,  as  Frederick 
Myers  prophesied,  a  few  generations  hence 


98        ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

it  will  be  impossible  for  any  man  to  doubt 
the  appearances  of  Jesus  to  his  disciples 
after  Calvary,  but  at  present,  the  evidence, 
whether  of  our  own  immortality  or  of  the 
Master's,  must  move  for  most  men  in  a 
realm  quite  other  than  that  of  psychic 
phenomena.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  multi- 
tudes, who  take  their  faith  in  immortality, 
without  evidence,  on  the  dictum  of  an  ex- 
ternal authority,  but  such  a  credulous  atti- 
tude is  increasingly  impossible.  If  the  as- 
sertion of  immortality  in  book  and  church 
cannot  find  positive  support  in  discoverable 
facts,  mankind's  conviction  of  its  truth  will 
surely  wane.  Men  to-day  demand  proof. 
Because,  therefore,  belief  in  immortality 
seems  to  be  amenable  to  no  scientific 
processes  of  thought,  and  to  allow  no  veri- 
fiable confirmation,  man's  faith  in  it  natu- 
rally tends  to  grow  unsure,  to  become  a 
tentative  and  uncertain  hope,  until  at  last 
the  future  world  for  him  pales  into  a  dim 
possibility. 

II 

The  common  statement,  therefore,  that 
immortality  cannot  be  proved,  must  be  sub- 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY        99 

jected  to  searching  analysis.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  it  is  untrue  that  the  assertion  of 
immortality  and  the  assertion  of  a  scientific 
law  involve  radically  different  intellectual 
processes,  and  the  popular  idea  that  they 
do  is  based  upon  an  utter  misunderstanding 
of  the  methods  which  scientists  continually 
employ.  The  fundamental  assumption  of 
all  science  is  that  the  universe  is  truly  a 
universe,  consistent  in  its  regularity  of  pro- 
cedure, not  erratic  and  whimsical,  but  uni- 
form, dependable  and  law-abiding.  With- 
out this  faith,  which  never  has  been  and 
never  can  be  fully  demonstrated,  science 
would  be  impossible.  Huxley  calls  him- 
self an  agnostic  with  reference  to  God's 
being  and  character,  but  in  regard  to  the 
consistency  and  regularity  of  the  universe 
he  could  not  be  agnostic  and  still  be  a  scien- 
tist. He  must  make  that  leap  of  faith,  and 
he  makes  it  with  gladness  and  confidence. 
"As  for  the  strong  conviction,"  he  says, 
"that  the  cosmic  order  is  rational,  and  the 
faith  that,  throughout  all  duration,  unbroken 
order  has  reigned  in  the  universe,  I  not  only 
accept  it,  but  I  am  disposed  to  think  it  the 
most  important  of  all  truths."     Exactly  ! 


ioo      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

Than  this  there  are  few  more  amazing 
ventures  of  faith  for  a  man  to  make,  and 
yet  this  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  science. 
For  this  assumption  that  the  universe 
always  has  been  and  always  will  be  a  reason- 
able and  law-abiding  whole,  is,  in  the  nature 
of  the  case,  not  amenable  to  complete 
verification.  So  many  confirming  facts, 
however,  indicate,  and  within  limited 
spheres  strictly  demonstrate,  the  depend- 
ableness  of  nature,  that  the  assertion  of  a 
universal  cosmic  order  is  a  reasonable  con- 
viction, as  certain  as  it  is  supremely  im- 
portant. Men  discovered  the  laws  of  the 
ellipse  and  found  afterwards  that  the  plan- 
ets in  their  courses  observe  them  per- 
fectly. The  chemical  conditions  and  qual- 
ities of  fire,  whether  on  earth  or  in  the  stars, 
are  found  to  be  identical.  In  special  sci- 
ences the  dependableness  of  nature  is  so 
completely  verified  that  the  exultant  asser- 
tion of  a  professor  in  chemistry  is  readily 
transferred  to  the  whole  cosmic  order  : 
"Ask  nature  the  same  question  in  the  same 
way,  and  she  will  always  give  you  the 
same  answer."  The  universe  is  everywhere 
amenable  to  thought ;  it  can  be  understood  ; 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY      101 

it  is  trustworthy,  not  capricious,  —  this  is 
the  conviction  which,  proved  in  segments,  is 
confidently  affirmed  as  the  faith  of  science 
concerning  the  entire  cosmic  process. 

A  notable  consequence  is  involved  in 
this  affirmation  that  the  universe  is 
rational.  What  does  this  assertion  mean, 
if  not  that  the  world  acts  as  it  might  be 
expected  to  act,  had  it  been  thought  through 
by  Mind.  When  Charles  Darwin  exclaims, 
"If  we  consider  the  whole  universe,  the 
mind  refuses  to  look  at  it  as  the  outcome  of 
chance,"  he  is  saying  that  the  cosmic  pro- 
cess is  rational  and  that  nothing  rational 
ever  comes  by  accident.  Reasonableness 
is  the  work  of  mind.  Can  a  man  read 
sense  into  a  printed  page  that  bears  the 
impress  of  type  which,  haphazard,  has 
pied  itself  ?  Type  must  express  previous 
thought  before  any  man  can  discover 
thought  there.  When,  therefore,  as  Dar- 
win says,  the  mind  refuses  to  believe  that 
the  planets  accidentally  arranged  them- 
selves, and  that  the  story  of  evolving 
human  life  comes  from  the  pied  type  of  a 
fortuitous  creation,  we  are  compelled  to  the 
alternative,    that    the    cosmic    order    has 


ioa      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

reasonableness  inherent  in  it,  discovered, 
not  created  by  the  thought  of  man.  The 
only  way  we  have  of  asserting  the  reason- 
ableness of  the  world  involves  the  assertion 
that  the  world  has  been  thought  through, 
that  there  is  mind  behind  it  and  in  it,  that 
it  did  not  come  by  chance,  and  that  the 
human  mind  studying  it,  discovers  thought 
already  there.  When  Kepler,  sweeping  the 
heavens  with  his  telescope,  cried  :  "O  God, 
I  think  Thy  thoughts  after  Thee,"  he  was 
affirming  the  logical  result  of  believing  that 
the  universe  is  rational. 

Because  science  starts  with  this  funda- 
mental assumption  of  the  cosmic  order's 
rationality,  it  goes  on  to  affirm  as  true  all 
propositions,  whether  they  can  be  com- 
pletely verified  or  not,  that  are  necessary 
to  make  intelligible  and  reasonable  the 
facts  of  experience.  The  scientist  notes  the 
facts  first,  and  then  makes  a  venture  of 
faith,  which  in  ordinary  parlance  is  con- 
cealed under  various  names, — doctrine,  as 
in  the  "doctrine  of  evolution,"  law,  as  in 
the  "law  of  gravitation,"  theory,  as  in  the 
"theory  of  electrons," — but  all  of  which 
have  this  in  common,  that  they  are  science's 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       103 

attempts  to  frame  a  proposition  that  will 
make  intelligible  and  reasonable  the  facts 
of  experience.  Every  statement  of  scien- 
tific law  is  a  venture  of  faith  in  disguise 
as  a  hypothesis.  The  Copernican  astron- 
omy was  at  first  a  sublime  guess,  and  the 
conservation  of  energy,  still  incapable  of 
universal  proof,  was  an  enormous  assump- 
tion, but  since  without  them  the  data  of 
the  physical  world  are  not  understandable, 
they  are  confidently  affirmed  as  true.  "He 
who  does  not  go  beyond  the  facts,"  says 
Huxley,  "will  seldom  get  as  far  as  the 
facts"  ;  and  even  Haeckel  adds,  "Scientific 
faith  fills  the  gaps  in  our  knowledge  of 
natural  laws  with  temporary  hypotheses." 
Take  away  this  privilege  of  faith,  and  from 
the  foundation  to  the  topmost  pinnacle 
the  elaborate  structure  of  science  falls 
apart  into  unrelated,  inchoate  elements. 
As  the  president  of  the  Massachusetts  Insti- 
tute of  Technology  expresses  it,  "Science 
is  grounded  in  faith  just  as  is  religion, 
and  scientific  truth,  like  religious  truth, 
consists  of  hypotheses,  never  wholly  veri- 
fied, that  fit  the  facts  more  or  less  closely." 
Without  the  exercise  of  faith,  therefore, 


io4      ASSURANCE   OF   I M  MORTALITY 

the  world  of  knowledge  would  be  reduced  to 
factual  elements,  disparate  and  unorgan- 
ized by  law,  a  topsy-turvy  jumble  of  units 
without  sequence  or  relation.  But  even 
this  sort  of  world  is  too  rich  and  copious 
to  be  obtained  without  faith.  Indeed,  let 
a  man  once  begin  to  be  a  thoroughgoing 
agnostic,  to  refuse  utterly  to  go  beyond  the 
facts,  and  he  speedily  reduces  the  universe 
to  absurdity.  To  believe  at  all  in  the 
existence  of  an  outer  world  or  in  the  reality 
of  other  persons  is  a  gigantic  venture  of  con- 
fidence. To  trust  as  veracious  one's  sen- 
sations of  things  and  people  is  prerequisite 
to  thinking  that  things  and  people  exist  at 
all,  so  that  if  by  proof  is  meant  the  achieve- 
ment of  undoubtable  certainty,  Tennyson's 
sage  is  strictly  correct : 

"Thou  canst  not  prove  the  Nameless,  O  my  son, 
Thou  canst  not  prove  the  world  thou  movest  in, 
Thou  canst  not  prove  that  thou  art  body  alone, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  that  thou  art  spirit  alone, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  that  thou  art  both  in  one: 
Thou  canst  not  prove  that  thou  art  immortal,  no, 
Nor  yet  that  thou  art  mortal  —  nay,  my  son, 
Thou  canst  not  prove  that  I,  who  speak  with  thee, 
Am  not  thyself  in  converse  with  thyself, 
For  nothing  worthy  proving  can  be  proven, 
Nor  yet  disproven." 


ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY      105 

Indeed,  such  unmitigated  scepticism,  not 
to  be  evaded  except  by  faith  in  those  per- 
ceptions which  assure  us  of  an  outer  world 
of  things  and  persons,  forces  us  even  to  dis- 
believe our  own  identity.  That  I  myself 
am  the  same  person  whose  experiences  are 
transmitted  in  the  flow  of  my  memory  is 
an  unprovable  conviction.  My  recollection 
is  assumed  for  true  on  faith,  and  my  sense  of 
personal  identity  is  the  result  of  trust  in  the 
veracity  of  my  remembrance.  If  a  man 
decides  to  have  done  with  faith,  from  its 
largest  and  most  comprehensive  exercise 
to  its  most  simple  functioning,  this  vast  and 
complicated  world  will  be  reduced  for  him 
to  the  luminous  pin-point  of  his  immediate 
sensation.  This  is  the  only  strictly  demon- 
strable experience  which  we  can  know,  and 
even  while  we  are  knowing  it,  it  is  gone. 
Everything  in  the  universe  beyond  that 
momentary  flash  of  consciousness,  our  per- 
sonal identity,  the  existence  of  an  objective 
world,  the  reality  of  other  persons,  and  our 
scientific  laws,  are  creations  saturated  thor- 
oughly with  faith.  That  this  is  a  reduc- 
tio  ad  absurdum  is  obvious,  but  it  is  agnos- 
ticism readily  reduced  to  absurdity  because, 


106      ASSURANCE   OF    IMMORTALITY 

in  its  essential  nature,  agnosticism  is  absurd. 
No  one  has  ever  really  practised  it,  save  as  a 
tentative  confession  of  embarrassment,  in 
the  attempt  to  push  to  its  limit  the  construc- 
tion of  a  world  out  of  chaos. 

The  plain  fact,  therefore,  is  that  every 
man  must  and  does  build  up  by  faith  the 
conception  of  the  world  in  which  he  lives, 
and  the  regulating  principle  of  this  scien- 
tific process,  by  which  a  man  "sees  life 
steadily  and  sees  it  whole,"  is  the  assump- 
tion that  those  propositions  are  true  which 
are  necessary  to  make  the  facts  of  life  intel- 
ligible and  reasonable.  On  this  principle 
man  believes  in  his  personal  identity,  the 
existence  of  an  objective  world  and  the 
reality  of  other  persons  ;  on  this  principle  he 
constructs  theories  in  astronomy  to  explain 
the  stars,  in  geology  to  explain  the  rocks 
and  in  psychology  to  explain  the  mental 
processes ;  and  on  this  same  principle  he 
affirms  the  truth  of  God  and  immortality. 
To  be  sure,  the  facts  involved  in  this  last 
affirmation  are  spiritual,  not  material,  are 
more  subtile,  less  tangible,  and  lend  them- 
selves with  greater  difficulty  to  confident 
verification,  than  the  facts  of  the  physical 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       107 

world,  but  so  far  as  the  fundamental  intel- 
lectual processes  are  concerned,  the  reli- 
gious interpretation  of  life,  affirming  God 
and  immortality,  is  a  venture  of  faith,  like t 
the  law  of  gravitation,  to  explain  the  facts. 
The  desires  of  men,  the  necessities  of  their 
intellectual  and  moral  life,  their  loves, 
faiths,  hopes  and  spiritual  possibilities,  are 
not  only  facts,  but  are  facts  incomparably 
more  significant  than  subhuman  things, 
rocks,  flowers,  fossils,  stars,  on  which  the 
natural  sciences  are  founded.  Must  not 
hypotheses  be  advanced  to  make  these 
greater  facts  intelligible  ?  When  one  re- 
members that  all  science  is  based  upon  the 
fundamental  assumption  that  the  universe 
is  reasonable,  when  one  considers  that  all 
propositions  are  affirmed  as  true  which  are 
necessary  to  rationalize  the  facts  of  experi- 
ence, it  is  clear  that  if  personal  permanence 
is  necessary  to  the  reasonableness  of  human 
life,  which  is  the  most  important  part  of  the 
universe,  we  have  proof  of  immortality,  in 
which  essentially  the  same  intellectual  pro- 
cess used  by  science  in  asserting  the  con- 
servation of  energy,  is  applied  to  the  loftier 
ranges  of  the  spiritual  life  of  man. 


108      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

III 

The  necessity  of  personal  permanence  to 
the  reasonableness  of  human  life  may  be, 
perhaps,  most  clearly  seen  when  we  consider 
the  essentially  limitless  possibilities  which 
inhere  in  knowledge  and  in  character.  If 
death  ends  all,  these  possibilities  are  involved 
in  man's  very  nature  only  that  without 
excuse  they  may  be  brusquely  and  abruptly 
snatched  away.  The  body  has  its  cycle  of 
existence,  like  a  tree ;  it  is  born,  reaches  its 
climacteric,  withers  and  dies,  but  the  mind 
consciously  walks  an  ascending  avenue, 
widens  its  horizons,  deepens  its  insight, 
and  is  ever  aware  that  there  are  no  limits 
to  the  possibilities  of  growing  knowledge. 
The  world  of  mind  is  an  illimitable  realm ; 
thought  amid  all  its  achievements  is  ever 
a  pioneer  that  hears  the  call  of  undiscovered 
countries  over  the  next  range  of  hills ;  and 
the  intellect  of  man,  conscious  of  these 
exhaustless  potentialities,  dies,  as  Goethe 
did,  crying  in  his  last  moments,  "More 
light!"  To  feel  the  endless  lure  of  truth 
yet  unattained  is  the  essential  nature  of 
the    intellectual    life.     If    Huxley    prefers 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY      109 

Hell  to  the  stoppage  of  his  growing  power 
to  know,  he  is  but  feeling  that  elemental 
passion  whose  most  notable  expression 
Milton  puts  into  the  mouth  of  his  mag- 
nificent Satan,  writhing  in  the  agonies  of 
the  pit : 

"For  who  would  lose, 
Though  full  of  pain,  this  intellectual  being, 
Those  thoughts  that  wander  through  eternity,  — 
To  perish  rather,  swallowed  up  and  lost 
In  the  wide  womb  of  uncreated  night, 
Devoid  of  sense  and  motion?" 

Not  the  small  men,  but  the  men  of  largest 
mental  life  most  have  felt  the  unforgiv- 
able cheat  which  the  universe  practises  on 
us,  if  it  opens  to  us  the  endless  possibility 
of  knowing,  only  to  refuse  us  its  fruition. 
What  is  thus  true  of  mind,  is  true  of 
character,  for  there  is  no  conceivable  limit 
to  the  potentiality  of  spiritual  life.  A 
traveller  in  Switzerland  tells  us  that,  uncer- 
tain of  his  way,  he  asked  a  small  lad  by 
the  roadside  where  Kandersteg  was,  and 
received,  so  he  remarks,  the  most  signifi- 
cant answer  that  was  ever  given  him.  "I 
do  not  know,  sir,"  said  the  boy,  "where 
Kandersteg  is,  but  there  is  the  road  to  it." 


no      ASSURANCE   OF  IMMORTALITY 

That  is  an  epitome  of  the  spiritual  experi- 
ence of  man.  The  ideal  is  beyond  our  ken, 
it  is  a  goal  that  never  can  be  located,  but 
always  in  the  progressive  achievement  of 
character,  we  are  conscious  that  we  are 
on  an  endless  road  that  leads  toward 
unknown  perfection.  While  death,  there- 
fore, seems  logically  the  portion  of  the 
body,  it  comes  as  an  impertinent  intruder, 
a  meddling  interloper  into  the  progress  of 
a  spiritual  life.  Death  resides  in  the  body 
from  the  beginning ;  but  death  is  a  thief 
who  breaks  into  the  character  and  steals 
from  it  its  essential  nature  of  endless 
aspiration.  Not  small  souls,  but  the  great 
men  of  spirit  have  most  been  conscious  of 
the  illimitable  realm  into  which  they  are 
introduced  by  even  the  faint  beginnings  of 
moral  character,  and  are  most  aware  of  the 
fraud  which  life  practises  on  them,  if  it 
creates,  only  to  disappoint,  what  Words- 
worth calls, 

"That  most  noble  attribute  of  man, 
Though  yet  untutored  and  inordinate, 
That  wish  for  something  loftier,  more  adorned, 
That  is  the  common  aspect,  daily  garb 
Of  human  life." 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY      in 

Now  the  argument  for  immortality  has 
always  included  the  fact  which  we  have  just 
been  stating,  that  human  life  on  the  plane  of 
earth  alone  promises  more  than  it  attains, 
aspires  beyond  its  grasp,  and  is  left  at 
death  an  unfinished  and  disappointing  frag- 
ment, truncated,  partial,  incomplete,  expir- 
ing like  Moses  on  Nebo's  top,  vainly  look- 
ing towards  the  lands  that  he  dreamed  of 
conquering  but  that  he  never  reached. 
This  argument,  however,  is  often  stated  so 
that  it  seems  to  say  in  language  more  or 
less  learned  and  grandiloquent,  that  men 
want  to  live  after  death  and  that,  therefore, 
immortality  must  be  considered  true.  But 
this  is  an  utter  perversion  and  caricature  of 
the  bearing  which  the  incompleteness  of 
human  life  at  death  has  upon  the  problem 
of  life  everlasting.  The  persuasive  con- 
sideration is  not  that  men  want  to  live 
after  death,  but  that  now  after  countless 
ages  of  painful  evolution,  the  creative 
process  has  brought  into  existence  beings 
who  have  set  their  feet  upon  endless  avenues 
of  knowledge  and  of  character.  They  are  the 
crown  of  creation ;  no  mother  could  insist 
that  her  babe  is  worth  more  than  all  the 


ii2      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

Alps  with  greater  assurance  than  reason 
insists  on  evaluing  personalities  above  un- 
conscious and  unmoral  rocks  and  stars.  And 
now  when  the  universe  has  so  achieved  a 
creature  in  whom  evolution  has  ceased 
being  physical  and  has  become  psychical, 
in  whom  exhaustless  possibilities  are  at 
last  begotten,  does  the  universe  in  utter 
unconsciousness  of  her  achievement  toss 
the  potentialities  of  mind  and  spirit  into 
Sheol  with  the  refuse  of  the  flesh,  and  caring 
no  more  for  one  than  for  the  other,  bring 
all  alike  to  a  dismal  and  inconsequential 
end?  Then  human  life,  as  we  know  it,  is 
utterly  unreasonable.  The  most  hopeful 
attitude  which  we  can  take  towards  it  is 
that  of  the  King  of  Hearts  in  "Alice  in 
Wonderland,"  when  he  examines  the  cryptic 
document  introduced  at  the  historic  trial. 
"If  there  is  no  meaning  in  it,"  he  says, 
"  that  saves  a  world  of  trouble,  as  we  needn't 
try  to  find  it."  One  generation  of  incom- 
plete, aspiring  persons  is  wiped  off  the  earth, 
as  a  child  erases  unfinished  problems  from  his 
slate,  that  another  generation  of  incomplete, 
aspiring  persons  may  be  created  —  created 
and  then  annihilated.      Nothing    ever    is 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       113 

finished  anywhere.  God,  like  a  half-witted 
artist,  amusing  himself  with  tasks  that 
have  no  meaning,  paints  pictures  in  which 
he  barely  outlines  forms  of  beauty,  full  of 
promise,  only  to  erase  them  and  begin 
again.  Aspiring  characters,  as  an  agnostic 
said,  are  "trying  to  get  music  out  of 
sackbuts  and  psalteries,  that  never  were 
in  tune  and  seemingly  never  will  be," 
and  our  social  labors  simply  build  tran- 
sient oases  in  a  desert  world,  empty  of 
spiritual  meaning  —  oases  that  in  the  end 
the  desert  will  consume  in  burning  sand. 
To  say  that  the  loftiest  aspects  of  our  human 
life  in  such  a  universe  are  unintelligible 
and  unreasonable  is  surely  far  within  the 
boundaries  of  the  obvious. 

When,  therefore,  we  assume,  as  science 
always  does  in  the  physical  realm,  that  this 
is  a  reasonable  world,  we  have  a  positive 
and  assuring  argument  for  immortality. 
Of  course,  this  may  be  an  utterly  erratic 
universe,  not  in  the  least  to  be  depended  on 
to  furnish  reliable  clews  to  truth,  but  such 
a  conception  makes  science  as  impossible  as 
it  makes  immortality  unlikely.  When  ir- 
regularities in  the  orbit  of  Uranus  were  dis- 


ii4      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

covered,  for  which  there  was  no  visible 
explanation,  science  did  not  throw  up  her 
hands  in  hopelessness,  consenting  that  the 
heavens  were  capricious  and  whimsical. 
Rather,  Leverrier  computed  the  size,  po- 
sition and  orbit  of  a  planet  which,  if  the  per- 
turbations of  Uranus  were  to  be  made 
intelligible,  must  be  in  the  heavens.  Be- 
cause of  her  fundamental  faith  that  the  uni- 
verse is  not  irrational,  science  knew  that  the 
planet  must  be  there,  although  unseen,  and 
when  sight  consummated  insight,  and  Nep- 
tune was  discovered,  less  than  one  degree 
from  the  spot  indicated  in  the  prophetic 
affirmations  of  Leverrier,  the  faith  of  sci- 
ence in  the  dependableness  of  the  world 
was  justified.  Not  otherwise  is  personal 
permanence  essential  to  the  reasonableness 
of  human  life ;  the  orbits  of  aspiring  mind 
and  character  demand  it  to  make  them 
intelligible ;  and  the  faith  that  insight,  so 
based  upon  the  reasonableness  of  creation, 
shall  some  day  be  turned  to  sight,  when  we 
have  eyes  to  see  the  unseen  world,  is  a 
faith  built  on  foundations  firm  and  deep. 


ASSURANCE  OF  IMMORTALITY      115 

IV 

If  the  basal  assumption  of  science  that 
the  universe  is  reasonable  supplies  so  strong 
a  foundation  for  faith  in  immortality,  how 
much  more  does  the  basal  assumption 
of  religion  that  the  universe  is  beneficent 
argue,  of  necessity,  the  permanence  of 
personality  !  If  God  is  good  in  any  sense 
imaginable  to  man,  then  he  cares  for  his 
creatures,  has  a  purposeful  meaning  in 
them,  and  regards  them  with  solicitous 
concern.  A  just  and  fatherly  God  cannot 
have  brought  into  being  children,  capable 
of  endless  growth,  aspiring  after  perfect 
knowledge  and  character,  only  to  toss  them 
one  by  one  into  oblivion,  until  at  last, 
tired  even  of  the  house  he  built  for  them, 
he  burns  it  up.  As  the  seers  have  always 
felt,  the  goodness  and  honor  of  God  are 
at  stake  in  the  question  of  immortality,  — 

"Thou  wilt  not  leave  us  in  the  dust : 
Thou  madest  man,  he  knows  not  why, 
He  thinks  he  was  not  made  to  die ; 
And  thou  hast  made  him:  thou  art  just." 

Of  course  the  confident  affirmation  that 
God  is  good  has  always  met   the  amazed 


n6      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

and  jeering  accusation  of  anthropomor- 
phism. Your  God  is  your  lengthened 
shadow,  men  say ;  you  have  taken  the 
coin  of  the  realm  universal  and  stamped 
your  own  visage  on  it.  What  the  accuser 
obviously  means  is  that  a  man  has  com- 
mitted an  astonishing  blunder  when  he 
goes  down  into  his  own  experience,  and 
there  takes  the  best  and  highest  that  he 
knows  for  his  interpretation  of  God.  The 
suggestion  is  that  when  a  materialist  takes 
rocks  and  stars,  or  a  monist  takes  abstract 
notions  like  energy  and  law,  for  his  idea  of 
Deity,  he  has  performed  the  sublimely 
ingenious  feat  of  overleaping  the  boundaries 
of  human  experience  and  finding  a  symbol 
of  God  that  is  not  anthropomorphic.  Of 
course  he  has  done  no  such  thing.  Can 
a  man  leap  outside  himself  and  look  at  the 
world  through  other  than  human  eyes  or  con- 
ceive it  in  other  than  human  terms  ?  All  the 
rocks  and  stars  I  know  and  can  use  in 
thought,  are  rocks  and  stars  which,  in  the 
form  I  know  them,  have  been  made  inside 
my  experience ;  all  the  abstract  ideas  of 
energy  and  law  I  have  are  those  of  my 
own  mind's  construction ;  the  entire  world 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       117 

in  which  I  live  and  from  which  I  can  pick 
symbols  by  which  to  interpret  God  is  the 
world  of  my  own  consciousness  —  an  an- 
thropomorphic world,  because  conformed 
to  the  laws  of  my  own  thinking.  I  have  no 
pool  other  than  my  own  consciousness  in 
which  to  fish  for  my  ideas  of  anything. 
The  question  is  never  whether  or  not  a 
man  will  interpret  God  by  some  element  in 
his  experience,  he  cannot  help  that ;  the 
question  is  only  whether  he  will  interpret 
God  at  all,  and  if  so,  what  elements  of  his 
experience  he  will  use,  the  low  or  the  high. 
Physical  energy  is  just  as  much  our  expe- 
rience of  body  read  out  into  the  world  as 
personality  is  our  experience  of  self-con- 
sciousness. Materialist  though  a  man  be, 
down  into  his  own  experience  he  must 
plunge  like  the  veriest  Christian,  however 
he  tries  to  escape  it ;  only  if  he  chooses,  he 
may  bring  up  body  instead  of  soul,  the 
lowest  instead  of  the  highest,  for  his  inter- 
pretation of  Deity.  It  is  faith  in  either 
case,  however,  and  it  is  anthropomorphism 
too.  Christianity's  method,  therefore,  is 
not  one  whit  different  from  the  materialist's 
or  the  monist's  save  in  this,  that  instead 


nS      ASSURANCE   OF    IMMORTALITY 

of  choosing  a  lower  part  of  experience,  or 
a  by-product  of  experience,  Christianity, 
ranging  over  the  hierarchy  of  elements 
there,  from  the  vassal  serf  of  physical  energy 
to  the  spiritual  king,  self-conscious  per- 
sonality, hungering  for  righteousness  and 
ablaze  with  love,  takes  this  last,  this  highest 
form  of  life  it  knows,  and  that  too  with 
lofty  and  undiscourageable  optimism  ex- 
tended to  the  farthest  boundaries  of  imag- 
ination, as  the  only  adequate  highway  to 
travel  toward  the  truth  about  God.  The 
Christian  is  anthropomorphic,  as  every  one 
has  to  be,  but  being  under  such  necessity, 
he  thinks  that  the  whole  of  man  is  not  too 
big  nor  too  good  to  be  the  symbol  of  God. 
"But,"  says  some  one,  now  no  longer 
able  to  contain  impatience  with  such  an 
exultant  idea  of  God,  "do  you  mean  that 
by  interpreting  God  in  terms  of  the  hu- 
manly best  you  can  imagine,  you  have 
comprehended  absolute  Deity,  the  omnip- 
otent, omnipresent,  omniscient  God,  the 
philosophic  world-ground,  the  ontological 
essence  of  the  universe?"  To  which  the 
Christian,  likewise  impatient,  answers, 
"Do  you    think    that    I    go    hunting    for 


ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY      119 

the  sun  at  noon  with  a  butterfly  net,  that 
I  seek  to  imprison  the  Most  High  in  a  hu- 
man symbol  ?  Who  am  I  that  I  should 
talk  about  absolute  Deity  or  seek  to  grasp 
the  Infinite  with  a  finite  mind  ?  Only  this 
is  my  faith,  that  through  all  eternity,  with 
all  new  disclosures  of  God,  never  will  a 
man  who  starts  with  the  best  he  knows 
have  to  stop,  turn  around,  come  back,  and 
begin  again  on  a  road  toward  God  that  is 
less  than  that  best.  Never  will  he  have  to 
take  a  path  that  is  lower  than  personal, 
or  that  negatives  holiness  and  love.  The 
road  leads  what  distance  beyond  my  gaze 
I  cannot  guess,  but  it  is  the  same  road  and 
not  another."  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  has  given 
in  one  sentence  a  complete  summary  of 
the  Christian's  method  of  approach  to  the 
idea  of  God:  "I  will  not  believe  that  it  is 
given  to  man  to  have  thoughts,  nobler  or 
loftier  than  the  real  truth  of  things." 

When,  therefore,  to  the  Christian  the  old 
taunt  is  flung,  "The  lions,  if  they  could 
have  pictured  God,  would  have  pictured 
him  in  fashion  like  a  lion,"  the  answer  is 
ready  at  once  :  Good  for  the  lions  !  For  if 
they  had  been  gifted  with  a  faith  superb 


i2o      ASSURANCE   OF  IMMORTALITY 

enough  to  do  so  worthy  and  exalted  a  thing 
as  to  take  the  best  they  had  and  think  out 
toward  God  along  the  pathway  of  it,  they 
would  have  been  in  so  far  Christian  in  their 
philosophy  of  life.  It  were  certainly  nobler 
and  truer  to  be  a  lion  interpreting  God  in 
terms  of  the  best  lion  he  could  imagine, 
than  to  be  a  man  interpreting  God  in  terms 
of  dirt. 

But  if  God  is  good  in  any  such  way  as 
this,  then  death  does  not  end  all.  Not 
only  in  general  is  an  unreasonable  world 
utterly  incompatible  with  a  just  and  benef- 
icent God,  but  in  particular,  a  God  of  good 
will  must  care  for  his  creation.  What, 
then,  in  all  the  universe  can  be  the  object  of 
the  divine  solicitude  ?  Is  God  vain  about 
his  sun  and  stars  ?  Is  he  twirling  them 
about  his  thumb  and  finger,  like  a  child, 
proud  of  their  scintillating  revolutions, 
until  transposing  them  and  caring  nothing 
that  the  transposition  incidentally  anni- 
hilates the  transient  race  of  beings  on  the 
earth,  he  will  twirl  them  in  some  other  way  ? 
Such  a  conception  of  God  is  impossible. 
If  God  exists  at  all,  he  must  care  for  his 
creation,  and  if  he  cares  at  all,  he  must  care 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       121 

for  the  crown  of  creation,  personality. 
Charles  Darwin  tells  us  that  at  times  he 
had  a  warm  sense  of  a  friendly  God,  but 
that  at  other  times  this  feeling  vanished. 
Yet  even  with  so  fugitive  a  faith  in  a  uni- 
verse that  cared  for  its  creatures,  he  wrote, 
"It  is  an  intolerable  thought  that  man  and 
all  other  sentient  beings  are  doomed  to 
complete  annihilation,  after  such  long-con- 
tinued slow  progress."  To  one  who  is 
deeply  convinced  that  Darwin's  occasional 
and  evanescent  sense  of  a  friendly  God  may 
be  a  man's  reasonable  and  constant  faith, 
such  a  conception  of  the  world  is  not  only 
intolerable  ;  it  is  impossible.  To  talk  about 
the  fatherhood  of  a  God,  who  begets  chil- 
dren, only  to  annihilate  them,  is  absurd. 
The  goodness  of  God  is  plainly  at  stake 
when  one  discusses  immortality,  for  if  death 
ends  all,  the  Creator  is  building  men  like 
sand  houses  on  the  shore,  caring  not  a 
whit  that  the  fateful  waves  will  quite 
obliterate  them  all.  If  death  ends  all, 
the  struggle  and  aspiration  of  humanity 
have  meant  no  more  to  him  than  the  mist 
that  rests  in  the  morning  on  the  Alps  and 
at  noon  is  gone.     If  death  ends  all,  there  is 


122      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

no  God  of  whom  goodness,  in  any  conno- 
tation imaginable  to  man,  can  be  predi- 
cated. 

How  indissolubly  faith  in  immortality 
is  interwoven  with  faith  in  a  beneficent 
Deity  is  plain  when  one  considers  the 
venerable  objection  to  belief  that  God  is 
good,  which  has  always  made  acceptance 
of  Christian  optimism  difficult.  The  pres- 
ent evils  of  human  life,  its  miseries,  dis- 
eases and  sins,  its  Lisbon  earthquake  that 
caused  Goethe  even  when  six  years  old  to 
doubt  the  justice  of  the  universe,  and  its 
San  Francisco  fire  that  made  more  atheists 
than  preachers  will  convert  in  many  a 
year,  —  these  are  the  standard  and  colossal 
arguments  against  the  honor  and  benefi- 
cence of  God.  To  this  objection  only  one 
answer  ever  has  been  possible.  Those 
who  in  spite  of  the  injustice  and  evil  of  our 
present  life  have  still  believed  that  God 
is  good  have  insisted  that  there  is  no  more 
reason  to  interpret  human  existence  evilly 
in  terms  of  its  woes,  than  to  interpret  it 
happily  in  terms  of  its  amazing  story  of 
spiritual  growth,  and  that  while  it  is  impos- 
sible to  account   for  goodness  in  man  if 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       123 

there  is  no  goodness  at  the  heart  of  the 
world,  it  is  entirely  possible  that  the  inci- 
dental evils  of  a  process,  leading  toward  a 
worthy  consummation,  may  be  explicable 
when  the  process  is  complete.  The  asser- 
tion of  the  beneficence  of  God  has  always 
depended  for  its  full  support  upon  this 
appeal  to  the  arbitrament  of  the  future. 
Like  Gladstone,  defeated  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  the  man  of  faith  has  returned 
undismayed  to  face  his  enemies,  wearing 
a  boutonnidre  of  defiance  on  his  coat,  and 
saying,  "I  appeal  to  time  !" 

If,  therefore,  all  worthy  consummation 
to  human  life  is  denied,  if  men,  seeing  their 
present  inexplicable  woes,  are  convinced 
that  no  resultant  future  will  ever  show  the 
reason  for  a  process  that  here  was  mys- 
terious and  hard,  as  a  vase  might  under- 
stand in  retrospect  the  deft  and  strenuous 
fingering  of  the  potter  and  the  overwhelm- 
ing heat  of  the  furnace,  then  the  basis  is 
removed  on  which  man  can  rest  his  faith 
in  a  friendly  universe.  The  universe  dis- 
tinctly is  not  friendly,  if  it  has  reared  with 
such  pain  the  moral  life  of  man,  only  to 
topple  it  over  like  a  house  of  cards. 


i24      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

While  a  man,  therefore,  may  believe  in 
immortality  without  believing  in  the  good- 
ness of  God,  he  cannot  reasonably  believe 
in  the  goodness  of  God  without  believing 
in  immortality.  Indeed,  the  Buddhist  pas- 
sion to  escape  continued  existence  bears 
impressive  witness  that  without  a  benefi- 
cent Deity,  life  everlasting,  while  believ- 
able, is  positively  undesirable.  The  "noble, 
eightfold  path"  of  Buddha,  by  which  a 
man  shall  reach  Nirvana,  and  become 
"like  a  flame  that  has  been  blown  out," 
has  been  preached  to  men  with  a  mis- 
sionary enthusiasm  that  can  find  its  equal, 
if  at  all,  only  in  Christianity,  not  because 
Buddhists  do  not  believe  in  immortality, 
but  because  they  do  believe  in  it,  and 
because,  conceiving  God  not  as  beneficent, 
but  as  unconscious,  unmoral  Being,  devoid 
of  character  and  purpose,  immortality  to 
them  is  so  undesirable  that  to  escape  it  is 
their  supreme  ambition.  The  wheel  of 
continuous  existence  is  their  terror.  They 
proclaim  as  a  gospel  that  to  become  here 
a  passionless  sepulchre  in  which  all  desires 
are  dead  is  the  way  to  that  reabsorp- 
tion    into    unconscious    Being    which    is 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       125 

the  great  salvation  of  the  race,  the 
passionately  desired  escape  from  the  neces- 
sity of  living.  "Let,  therefore,  no  man 
love  anything!"  says  Buddha.  "Loss  of 
the  beloved  is  evil.  Those  who  love 
nothing  and  hate  nothing  have  no  fetters." 
Continuous  life  in  a  universe  that  is  not 
friendly  is  a  bane  to  be  abhorred.  When, 
however,  a  man  positively  believes  in 
a  God  of  good  will  and  purpose,  eternal 
life  to  him  is  not  only  inevitable ;  it  is 
desirable.  The  difference  between  Buddha's 
attitude  towards  immortality  and  the 
New  Testament's  is  not  that  one  believes 
in  existence  after  death,  while  the  other 
is  unsure  or  disbelieving ;  both  alike 
are  positively  convinced  of  the  soul's 
continuance.  But  one,  conceiving  ever- 
lasting life  in  terms  of  a  Fatherless  world, 
dreads  it  as  a  mediaeval  Christian  dreaded 
Hell ;  while  the  other,  crying  that  death 
cannot  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God, 
claims  it  as  an  inspiration  and  a  glorious 
hope.  One  strength  of  Buddhism  lies  in  the 
fact  that  the  idea  of  a  perpetual,  self- 
conscious  existence,  which  through  everlast- 
ing ages  trails  after  it  the  full  memory  of  all 


i26      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

previous  experience  and  from  itself  never  can 
escape,  causes  to  the  man  who  endeavors  to 
imagine  it  what  Professor  Goldwin  Smith 
calls  "mental  vertigo."  The  human  mind 
finds  it  as  impossible  to  handle  this  concep- 
tion as  in  mathematics  it  finds  it  impossible 
to  make  infinity  a  member  of  an  equation 
without  invalidating  the  result.  Absolute 
infinity  in  any  realm  cannot  be  dealt  with 
by  the  human  mind.  What  God  may 
mean  by  personal  permanence  beyond  our 
present  power  to  picture  or  to  compre- 
hend, the  thought  of  man  may  not  usefully 
inquire,  but  with  the  faith  that  the  uni- 
verse is  friendly  comes  the  faith  that  it 
purposes  endless  progress  for  us,  and  this 
is  sufficient,  without  knowing  more,  for  the 
deepest  human  needs. 

Whether  one  starts,  therefore,  from  the 
scientific  affirmation  that  the  universe  is 
reasonable  or  from  the  religious  faith  that 
the  universe  is  friendly,  he  comes  inevi- 
tably to  the  conviction  that  death  does  not 
end  all.  The  assurance  of  immortality  is 
grounded  on  great  foundations.  The  rea- 
sonableness and  beneficence  of  creation  are 
pledged  against  the  annihilation    of  man. 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       127 

V 

No  other  reasons  for  faith  in  immortality 
compare  in  fundamental  importance  with 
those  which  have  been  mentioned,  but  there 
are  at  least  two  further  considerations  which 
tend  greatly  to  confirm  belief  in  everlast- 
ing life.  That  the  universe  is  reasonable 
and  beneficent  and  so  will  certainly  pre- 
serve its  moral  gains,  is  a  judgment  of  value, 
in  making  which  the  single  individual,  un- 
supported by  his  fellows,  might  well  feel 
insecure.  The  main  facts  of  Beethoven's 
life  may  be  so  clearly  ascertained  by  one 
investigator  that,  whether  any  one  agrees 
with  him  or  not,  he  is  convinced ;  but  that 
Beethoven's  music  is  beautiful  would  be 
exceedingly  difficult  for  a  single  critic  to 
maintain,  if  all  those  most  competent  to 
judge  in  the  aesthetic  realm  insisted  that 
the  sonatas  were  miserable  music.  If  one 
inquires  the  nature  of  the  proof  demanded 
when  men  seek  to  demonstrate  that  the 
Sistine  Madonna  is  glorious,  or  that  the 
Prize  Song  in  "Die  Meistersinger  "  is  superb, 
he  sees  that  it  depends  in  no  small  degree 
upon  the  consensus  of  opinion  among  those 


128      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

most  competent  to  judge.  If,  therefore, 
a  man,  feeling  that  the  reasonableness  and 
friendliness  of  the  cosmic  order  are  worthy- 
foundations  for  his  faith  in  a  future  life, 
should  find  himself  alone  in  such  an  esti- 
mate, while  ranged  against  him  the  seers 
of  the  race  marshalled  their  contrary  judg- 
ments, it  would  require  an  almost  unattain- 
ably  heroic  obstinacy  of  opinion  to  insist 
that  he  is  right.  Who,  upon  the  other  hand, 
can  calculate  the  confirming  influence  on 
our  faith,  if  the  judgment  which  we  have 
reached  is  not  withstood,  but  with  aston- 
ishing unanimity  is  supported  by  the  author- 
ity of  those  spiritual  seers  who  have  seen 
most  deeply  the  significance  of  life  ? 

This  use  of  authority  is  not  by  any 
means  irrational.  Even  science,  from 
whose  realm  authority  in  the  old  sense  of 
dictatorial  dogmatism  has  been  banished, 
welcomes  authority  in  the  opinions  of 
able  and  disinterested  experts.  Few  men  of 
all  the  millions  who  believe  the  facts  have 
ever  measured  the  92,000,000  miles  to  the 
sun,  or  for  themselves  have  fathomed  the 
secrets  of  the  scientific  theories  which, 
taken  for  granted  on  expert  authority,  are 


ASSURANCE   OF  IMMORTALITY      129 

used  in  daily  business.  If  a  man  refused 
to  make  use  of  any  knowledge  save  that 
which  he  personally  had  proved,  he  would 
live  in  a  universe  painfully  meagre  and 
desiccated.  When  a  man  believes  Mr. 
Edison's  assertions  in  the  realm  of  elec- 
tricity, it  is  generally  not  because  he  him- 
self has  demonstrated  them,  but  because  he 
trusts  Mr.  Edison's  ability  and  honesty, 
finds  what  he  himself  knows  of  electricity 
not  negatived,  but  illustrated  and  com- 
pleted by  the  opinions  of  the  specialist, 
and  is  confirmed  in  his  faith  by  the  prac- 
tical results  which  Mr.  Edison  manifestly 
attains  on  the  basis  of  his  truths.  Even  in 
science  one  cannot  easily  exaggerate  the 
practical  importance  of  the  expert's  author- 
ity. 

This  use  of  authority  in  science,  however, 
is  insignificant  in  comparison  with  its  use  in 
those  higher  ranges  of  man's  life  where  judg- 
ments of  worth  are  necessary.  There,  as 
Browning  says, 
"  One  wise  man's  verdict  outweighs  all  the  fools  ! " 

If  in  the  establishment  of  some  scientific 
theory  all  Asia  and  Africa  count  for  noth- 
ing, and  the  masses  of  unqualified  men  pro- 


i3o      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

test  and  disbelieve  in  vain,  because  the 
specialists  who  really  know  have  seen  the 
truth  and  spoken  it,  how  much  more  in  the 
rating  of  beautiful  music,  painting  and 
architecture,  do  men  of  dull  eyes  shrug 
their  shoulders  to  no  effect,  and  insensitive 
minds  seek  in  vain  to  turn  appreciation  into 
cynicism  !  The  seers  are  the  demonstrators 
of  the  value- judgments  of  the  world.  Not 
in  religious  truth  alone,  but  in  all  spiritual 
concerns  of  beauty  and  goodness,  we  ordi- 
nary men  stand  upon  the  slope  and  cry  to 
those  upon  the  summit,  that  with  their 
wider  vision  they  must  interpret  to  us  the 
real  truth  of  life. 

Men's  faith  in  immortality,  therefore,  is 
immeasurably  confirmed  by  the  testimony 
of  the  spiritual  seers.  With  overwhelming 
unanimity  they  bear  witness  to  their  faith 
in  a  reasonable  world  that  "will  not  leave 
us  in  the  dust."  If  we  seek  counsel  of 
the  most  comprehensive  spirit  outside  the 
range  of  the  Jewish-Christian  development, 
we  hear  Socrates  saying  through  Plato : 
"Then  beyond  question  the  soul  is  immor- 
tal and  imperishable  and  will  truly  exist  in 
another  world."     If  we  seek  counsel  of  that 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       131 

spiritual  Master,  who  most  seems  to  include 
in  himself  the  ideals  of  all  centuries,  all 
races,  both  sexes,  all  ages,  as  the  pure  white 
light  gathers  up  and  blends  the  split  and 
partial  colors  of  the  spectrum,  we  hear  him 
saying  with  perfect  confidence:  "In  my 
Father's  house  are  many  mansions."  The 
argument  is  often  urged  that  the  universal 
belief  in  immortality,  held  by  all  men  in  all 
ages,  makes  strong  presumption  of  im- 
mortality's truth ;  that  if  the  analogy  of 
physical  life  holds  good,  no  universal  human 
functioning  exists  without  an  objective 
fact  to  call  it  into  being ;  so  that  without  the 
stimulus  of  the  existence  of  another  world, 
it  is  inconceivable  that  all  races  would  have 
believed  in  it.  But  this  argument,  founded 
on  the  faith  of  the  vast,  obscure  masses  of 
mankind,  while  it  has  its  place,  does  not 
compare  in  persuasive  power  with  the  con- 
sideration of  those  elevated  souls,  who, 
rising  far  above  the  common  levels  of  our 
human  life,  have  from  their  altitude  assured 
us,  not  with  less  confidence,  but  ever  with 
more  positiveness  as  they  stood  higher  in 
the  spiritual  scale,  that  everlasting  life  is 
true.     Unless   Germany  denies  that    men 


i32      ASSURANCE   OF    IMMORTALITY 

like  Kant  are  her  deep-seeing  prophets ; 
unless  England  chooses  lesser  souls  than  her 
Wordsworth,  Browning,  and  Tennyson  to 
represent  her  loftiest  spiritual  insight ;  un- 
less America  says  to  Emerson,  to  Whittier, 
and  to  their  like  that  they  are  not  our  seers  ; 
men  must  confess  that  with  marvellous  una- 
nimity the  most  elevated  and  far-seeing 
spirits  of  the  race  have  most  believed  in 
immortality.  Not  the  small  souls,  but  the 
men  of  "a  lordly  great  compass  within" 
have  felt  most  keenly  the  necessity,  reason- 
ableness and  assured  certainty  of  life  eternal. 
Now  this  appeal  to  the  seers  is  not  in  its 
deepest  significance  an  appeal  to  an  exter- 
nal authority.  What  the  greatest  men 
ordinarily  feel  is  what  ordinary  men  feel 
in  their  greatest  moments.  The  appeal 
to  the  seers  is  an  appeal  to  the  plain  man's 
best  hours.  In  a  singularly  revealing  sen- 
tence, Professor  Tyndall  says:  "I  have 
noticed  during  years  of  self- observation 
that  it  is  not  in  hours  of  clearness  and  of 
vigor  that  this  doctrine  (of  materialism) 
commends  itself  to  my  mind ;  for  in  the 
presence  of  stronger  and  healthier  thought 
it  ever  dissolves  and  disappears,  as  offering 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY      133 

no  solution  of  the  mystery  in  which  we 
dwell  and  of  which  we  form  a  part."  So 
every  man  is  aware  of  his  self-evidencing 
high  moments,  when  the  ground  rises  under 
his  feet  and  he  reaches  for  a  time  a  spiritual 
eminence,  from  which  horizons  are  visible 
and  vistas  stand  clear  that  are  not  within 
his  ken  on  ordinary  days.  The  arbitra- 
ment of  the  great  spirits  of  the  race  gets  its 
authority  for  us  because  they  but  confirm 
the  vision  of  our  own  elevated  hours. 
The  most  significant  choice  which  in  the 
end  every  man  makes,  is  between  his  own 
low  and  his  own  high  moments,  as  inter- 
preters of  life's  true  meaning.  When  then 
a  man  appeals  from  himself  at  his  worst  to 
himself  at  his  best,  is  there  any  question 
what  the  decision  is  upon  the  matter  of 
eternal  life  and  all  its  implications  ?  Does 
a  man  at  his  best  tend  to  think  that  he  is 
flesh  with  a  transient  mental  aspect,  that 
there  are  no  permanent  forces  save  the 
physical  powers  that  build  the  solar  systems 
and  destroy  them ;  that  the  earth  throws 
away  with  utter  carelessness  personality, 
her  most  precious  treasure,  and  never 
resolves  to  harmony  the  dissonance  of  her 


134      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

inequities  ?  Does  a  man  at  his  best  feel 
in  human  life  no  intrinsic  and  eternal  value 
to  inspire  sacrifice  for  spiritual  quality  in 
the  individual  and  to  furnish  basis  for  pas- 
sionate and  hopeful  service  to  the  race  ? 
Above  all,  does  any  man  in  his  sanest,  wor- 
thiest moments,  consent  to  think  that  the 
universe  preserves  none  of  the  moral  gains, 
which  have  cost  such  an  incalculable  price 
in  blood  and  tears  and  toil  ?  Is  he  willing 
to  accept  as  his  view  of  the  cosmic  mean- 
ing Thompson's  portrayal  of  a  world  that 
throws  away  with  heedless  hand  the  spirit- 
ual achievements  it  has  wrought  ? 

"The  world  rolls  round  forever  like  a  mill, 
It  grinds  out  life  and  death,  and  good  and  ill, 
It  has  no  purpose,  heart,  or  mind,  or  will. 

While  air  of  space  and  Time's  full  river  flow, 
The  mill  must  blindly  whirl  unresting  so, 
It  may  be  wearing  out,  but  who  can  know  ? 

Man  might  know  one  thing  were  his  sight  less  dim, 
That  it  whirls,  not  to  suit  his  petty  whim, 
That  it  is  quite  indifferent  to  him: 

Nay,  doth  it  use  him  harshly,  as  he  saith  ? 
It  grinds  him  some  slow  years  of  bitter  breath, 
Then  grinds  him  back  into  eternal  death." 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       135 

Is  that  the  truth  of  the  universe,  as  in 
a  man's  best  hours,  it  appeals  to  him  ? 
Rather  a  wholesome  mind  must  finally 
protest  against  a  useless  creation,  that  as 
Professor  James  put  it,  could  as  well, 
like  a  reversed  cinematograph,  run  one 
way  as  another,  because  it  means  nothing 
and  issues  nowhere.  Platonic  dialectics  to 
prove  the  immateriality  of  the  soul  and 
hence  its  necessary  immortality  no  longer 
interest  the  human  mind ;  the  bare  con- 
tinuance of  a  spiritual  substance,  deathless 
because  it  essentially  is  uncompounded 
and  therefore  indestructible,  is  not  even 
desired ;  but  desire  for  the  preservation 
of  the  race's  active,  spiritual  values  no 
generation  can  outgrow.  The  passing  of 
special  arguments  and  of  whole  philo- 
sophical systems  leaves  that  problem  still 
central  and  dominant.  Here,  after  all,  is 
the  crux  of  the  whole  question,  that  no  man 
in  those  hours  when  he  is  intellectually  and 
spiritually  at  his  best  can  consent,  without 
violence  to  his  profoundest  instincts,  to 
believe  in  a  world  that  loses  all  its  gains,  a 
world  in  which  nothing  that  we  have 
willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall 


i36      ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

exist.  Without  some  form  of  personal 
permanence  that  issue  to  the  cosmic  pro- 
cess seems  inevitable. 

VI 

The  underlying  reason  for  the  seeming 
inadequacy  of  all  proofs  of  the  life  to  come 
is  that  their  absolute  verification  is  impos- 
sible. Hypotheses  in  geology  can  be  veri- 
fied beyond  a  peradventure  by  putting 
them  to  the  test  of  facts  visible  and  tangi- 
ble. But  hypotheses  about  the  future  life, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  cannot  be  con- 
firmed by  an  appeal  to  experiences  beyond 
the  grave.  When,  in  answer  to  this  objec- 
tion, it  is  said  that  to  require  a  kind  of 
proof  which  necessarily  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion is  an  unreasonable  demand,  this, 
obviously,  does  not  better  the  case.  The 
really  fruitful  consideration  in  this  regard 
is  that  verification  of  the  hypothesis  of 
everlasting  life  is  not  altogether  impos- 
sible. Immortality  does  not  concern  the 
future  world  alone ;  it  concerns  this  present 
existence,  for,  as  we  have  said,  if  a  man  is 
immortal  at  all,  he  is  immortal  now. 
Whenever  a  man,  therefore,  begins  now  to 


ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY      137 

live  as  though  he  were  immortal,  he  is 
putting  the  truth  to  the  test  of  life,  and 
seeking  verification  of  its  validity  in  terms 
of  its  practical  consequences.  A  world  in 
which  poison  made  men  strong  and  foods 
destroyed  them  would  be  no  more  unreason- 
able than  a  world  in  which  falsehood  made 
great  characters  while  truth  applied  issued 
in  ignoble  spirit  and  unworthy  life.  Indeed, 
we  call  arsenic  poison  just  because  it  does 
destroy  us,  and  good  bread  we  call  food, 
because  it  builds  us  up.  So  in  practical 
life  we  count  those  things  true  which,  taken 
for  true,  prove  useful,  and  those  things 
false  which  will  not  verify  themselves  by 
the  difference  that  they  make  to  life.  The 
engineer,  who,  engaged  in  the  construction 
of  a  bridge,  first  plots  his  plans  according 
to  the  laws  of  mathematics,  then  submits 
them  to  experts  for  corroboration,  and 
then  building  his  structure,  looks  for  the  ul- 
timate confirmation  of  his  judgment  in  the 
completed  work,  standing  the  test  of  use, 
indicates  by  his  method  of  procedure  the 
road  to  all  verification  of  truth.  Let  a  man 
so  test  the  affirmation  of  immortality. 
Let  his  best  judgment  decide  that  it  is  true, 


138      ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY 

and  this  judgment  be  substantiated  by  the 
verdict  of  the  seers,  and  then  let  him  start 
to  live  now  as  though  he  were  immortal. 
What  confirming  consequences  are  sure  to 
come  !  The  man  who  lives  as  though  he 
were  immortal  lives  in  a  universe  where  the 
highest  spiritual  values  are  permanent, 
outlasting  the  growth  and  dissolution  of  the 
stars  ;  where  personality,  whether  in  himself 
or  others,  is  infinitely  precious  and  has 
everlasting  issues ;  where  character  is  the 
supreme  concern  of  life,  in  behalf  of  which 
all  else  may  reasonably  be  sacrificed ;  where 
no  social  service  ever  can  be  vain,  if  it  reg- 
isters itself  in  even  one  man  made  better, 
and  where,  in  all  public-minded  devotion  to 
moral  causes  on  the  earth,  we  are  not  dig- 
ging artificial  lakes  to  be  filled  by  our  own 
buckets,  in  hopeless  contest  with  an  alien 
universe,  but  are  rather  building  channels 
down  which  the  eternal  spiritual  purpose 
of  the  living  God  shall  flow  to  its  "far-off 
divine  event."  The  truth  of  immortality 
makes  great  living. 

It  is  just  here  that  Jesus  gives  his  most 
substantial  contribution  to  faith  in  life 
everlasting.     His  teaching  of  immortality 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY       139 

has  the  authoritative  value  of  a  verdict 
from  a  spiritual  seer,  but  his  life  has  a  veri- 
fying value,  exhibiting  to  us  once  for  all  the 
sort  of  character  resultant  from  living  as 
though  immortality  were  true.  At  least 
once,  in  him,  we  have  seen  what  assurance 
of  eternal  life  means  to  character.  For 
Jesus  differs  even  from  Socrates  in  this, 
that  while  Socrates  argued  for  immortality 
and  believed  it,  Jesus  never  stopped  to 
argue,  but  taking  it  for  granted,  as  an 
immediate  and  unquestionable  intuition, 
lived  as  though  it  undoubtedly  were  true. 
Others  have  analyzed  the  reasons  for  believ- 
ing in  life  everlasting,  as  one  might  analyze 
a  score  of  Mozart  and  discuss  arguments  to 
prove  its  beauty ;  but  Jesus  lived  immor- 
tality, as  one  might  play  Mozart  perfectly. 
When  one  considers,  therefore,  the  character 
of  Jesus,  in  which  faith  in  God  was  the  warp 
and  certainty  of  life  eternal  was  the  woof, 
he  is  seeing  the  consummate  verification  of 
faith  in  immortality.  This  is  the  result  in 
human  life  when  personal  permanence  passes 
from  theory  into  the  verifying  test  of  char- 
acter. Let  a  man  begin  to  live  as  though 
he  were  not  going  to  die,  and  his  tone  of 


i4o      ASSURANCE  OF   IMMORTALITY 

spiritual  quality  rises  by  sure  degrees 
towards  Christlikeness ;  let  a  man  begin 
to  live  as  though  death  were  the  end  of  all, 
and  even  those  who  themselves  have  held 
this  creed  confess  that  the  deepest  motives 
for  character  grow  dim,  and  that  social  ser- 
vice is  blighted  by  disillusionment.  Before 
a  man  gives  himself  to  disbelief  in  personal 
permanence,  let  him  consider  this  result, 
that  in  such  a  world  falsehood  makes  the 
best  character  and  truth  destroys  it. 

No  man,  therefore,  need  stop  with  the 
vague  possibility  of  life  to  come.  Immor- 
tality is  a  hypothesis,  if  you  will,  but  so  is 
gravitation,  and  around  them  both  con- 
siderations weighty  and  assuring  gather  in 
support.  The  reasonableness  of  the  uni- 
verse is  pledged  to  the  immortality  of  man  : 
the  beneficence  of  God  is  unthinkable  with- 
out it ;  the  verdict  of  the  spiritual  seers 
confirms  it ;  and  when  it  is  put  to  the  veri- 
fying test  of  life  it  builds  the  loftiest  charac- 
ter. 

Death  is  a  great  adventure,  but  none 
need  go  unconvinced  that  there  is  an  issue 
to  it.  The  man  of  faith  may  face  it  as 
Columbus  faced  his  first  voyage  from  the 


ASSURANCE   OF   IMMORTALITY      141 

shores  of  Spain.  What  lies  across  the  sea, 
he  cannot  tell ;  his  special  expectations  all 
may  be  mistaken ;  but  his  insight  into  the 
clear  meanings  of  present  facts  may  per- 
suade him  beyond  doubt  that  the  sea  has 
another  shore.  Such  confident  faith,  so 
founded  upon  reasonable  grounds,  shall  be 
turned  to  sight,  when,  for  all  the  dismay  of 
the  unbelieving,  the  hope  of  the  seers  is 
rewarded  by  the  vision  of  a  new  continent. 


'T'HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a 
few  of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects. 


The  Problem  of  Christianity 

IN   TWO   VOLUMES 

By  Josiah  Royce,  LL.D.,  Litt.  D. 

Professor  or  the  History  of  Philosophy,  Harvard  University;  Author 
of  "Outlines  of  Psychology,"  "The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty," 
"William  James,"  etc. 

Vol.  I.    The  Christian  Doctrine  of  Life. 

Vol.  II.  The  Real  World  and  the  Christian  Ideas. 

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A  work  of  great  importance  to  all  students  of  religion  and  philoso- 
phy and  to  the  general  reader  who  keeps  abreast  with  progress  in  these 
fields  is  Dr.  Josiah  Royce's  "The  Problem  of  Christianity,"  in  two 
volumes,  the  first,  "The  Christian  Doctrine  of  Life,"  and,  the  second, 
"The  Real  World  and  the  Christian  Ideas." 

Volume  I  is  a  study  of  the  human  and  empirical  aspects  of  some  of 
the  leading  ideas  of  Christianity;  Volume  II  deals  with  the  technically 
metaphysical  problems  to  which  these  ideas  give  rise.  The  two  vol- 
umes are  contrasted  in  their  methods,  the  first  discussing  religious 
experience,  the  second  dealing  with  its  metaphysical  foundations. 
They  are,  however,  closely  connected  in  their  purposes,  and  at  the 
end  the  relations  between  the  metaphysical  and  the  empirical  aspects 
of  the  whole  undertaking  are  reviewed. 

The  "Christian  Ideas"  which  Dr.  Royce  treats  as  "leading  and 
essential"  are,  first,  the  Idea  of  the  "Community,"  historically 
represented  by  the  Church;  second,  the  Idea  of  the  "Lost  State  of 
the  Natural  Man,"  and  the  third,  the  Idea  of  "Atonement,"  to- 
gether with  the  somewhat  more  general  Idea  of  "Saving  Grace." 

"These  three,"  Dr.  Royce  says,  "have  a  close  relation  to  a  doctrine 
of  life  which,  duly  generalized,  can  be,  at  least  in  part,  studied  as  a 
purely  human  'philosophy  of  loyalty'  and  can  be  estimated  in  em- 
pirical terms  apart  from  any  use  of  technical  dogmas  and  apart  from 
any  metaphysical  opinion.  .  .  .  Nevertheless  no  purely  empirical 
study  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  life  can,  by  itself,  suffice  to  answer 
our  main  questions.  It  is  indeed  necessary  to  consider  the  basis  in 
human  nature  which  the  religion  of  loyalty  possesses  and  to  portray 
the  relation  of  this  religion  to  the  social  experience  of  mankind.  To 
this  task  the  first  part  of  these  lectures  is  confined,  but  such  a  pre- 
liminary study  sends  us  beyond  itself. 

The  second  part  of  these  lectures  considers  the  neglected  phil- 
osophical problem  of  the  sense  in  which  the  community  and  its  Spirit 
are  realities."  

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Social  Idealism  and  the  Changing  Theology 

A  Study  of  the  Ethical  Aspects  of  Christian  Doctrine 

The  Nathaniel  William  Taylor  Lectures  for  191 2.    Delivered  before 
the  Yale  Divinity  School 

By  Gerald  Birney  Smith 

Associate  Professor  of  Christian  Theology  in  the  Divinity  School  of 

the  University  of  Chicago 

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"It  has  for  some  time  seemed  to  me,"  says  Gerald  Birney  Smith, 
in  the  preface  to  his  new  book,  "that  theological  scholarship  is  in 
danger  of  pursuing  a  course  which  might  end  in  a  somewhat  exclusive 
intellectualism.  As  the  progress  of  Biblical  criticism  has  compelled 
us  to  reconstruct  our  conception  of  the  way  in  which  the  Bible  is  to 
be  used,  the  appeal  to  the  Bible,  which  to  Luther  seemed  so  simple 
and  democratic  a  matter,  has  become  hedged  in  with  considerations 
of  critical  scholarship  difficult  for  those  who  are  not  specialists  to 
comprehend.  While  theologians  have  been  giving  attention  to  the 
problems  created  by  this  phase  of  scholarship  the  movements  of  life 
in  our  day  have  brought  to  the  front  aspects  of  the  social  question 
sadly  needing  the  guidance  and  the  control  which  can  be  supplied 
only  by  an  ethical  religion.  The  utterances  of  theology,  in  so  far  as  it 
has  followed  traditional  paths,  have  been  somewhat  remote  from  these 
pressing  moral  questions  of  social  justice." 

Professor  Smith  then  says  that  the  aristocratic  conception  of  social 
guidance  is  gradually  giving  way  to  a  democratic  conception,  and  goes 
on  to  show  how  and  why  this  change  from  aristocratic  to  democratic 
ideals  has  taken  place,  indicating  wherein  an  understanding  of  the 
significance  of  this  ethical  evolution  may  aid  in  the  reconstruction  of 
theology. 

The  author  believes  when  this  is  clearly  apprehended  by  theo- 
logians and  ministers  the  reconstruction  of  religious  beliefs  may  be 
more  closely  related  to  the  great  problems  of  social  ethics,  now  loom- 
ing so  large  and  needing  the  help  which  a  positive  religious  faith  can 
supply. 

The  work  is  divided  into  five  sections,  considering  in  turn  ecclesi- 
astical ethics  and  authoritative  theology,  the  discrediting  of  ecclesi- 
astical ethics,  the  moral  challenge  of  the  modern  world,  the  ethical 
basis  of  religious  assurance  and  the  ethical  transformation  of  theology. 

"Dr.  Smith's  book  should  interest  all  those  who  are  broad  enough 
to  realize  that  as  the  world  advances,  theological  religion  must  also 
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Christianizing  the  Social  Order 

By  Walter  Rauschenbusch 

Professor  of  Church  History  in  Rochester  Theological  Seminary 

Author  of  "Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis" 

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Supplements  the  powerful  message  of  "Christianity  and  the  Social 
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Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis 

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and  hard  thinking  have  wrought  it  out  and  enriched  it;  that  it  is 
written  in  a  clear,  incisive  style;  that  stern  passion  and  gentle  senti- 
ment stir  at  times  among  the  words,  and  keen  wit  and  grim  humor 
flash  here  and  there  in  the  turn  of  a  sentence.  It  is  a  book  to  like,  to 
learn  from,  and,  though  the  theme  be  sad  and  serious,  to  be  charmed 
with." — N.  Y.  Times  Sunday  Review  of  Books. 

Social  Religion 

By  Scott  Nearing 
Author  of  "Woman  and  Social  Progress,"  "Social  Adjustment,"  etc. 
Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.00  net;  postpaid,  $1.13 

There  is  probably  no  more  popular  writer  on  present-day  social 
problems  than  the  professor  in  the  Wharton  School  of  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania.  Dr.  Nearing  has  a  way  of  expressing  his  statements 
that  makes  an  irresistible  appeal  to  the  general  reader,  and  the  interest 
once  gained  is  held  by  the  importance  and  absolute  authoritativeness 
of  the  facts  which  he  presents.  In  his  new  book  he  takes  up  the  more 
deplorable  elements  in  the  modern  social  and  industrial  world,  analyz- 
ing them  in  the  light  of  a  practical  Christianity.  The  church-going 
public,  the  non-church  goers  and  those  who  are  openly  opposed  to  the 
methods  of  the  church  of  to-day  should  all  find  this  book  equally 
interesting,  and  no  matter  what  the  opinion  of  the  reader  may  be  he 
will  be  forced  to  admit  the  truth  of  the  author's  argument.  Dr.  Near- 
ing's  final  presentation  of  a  religion  that  is  really  social,  a  religion  the 
function  of  which  is  "to  abolish  ignorance  and  graft  and  to  provide 
for  normal  manhood  and  adjusted  life  toward  which  society  may 
strive"  is  particularly  suggestive. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers        64-66  Fifth  Avenue        New  York 


1  he  Church  and  the  Labor  Conflict 

By  Parley  Paul  Womer 

Author  of  "Relation  of  Healing  to  Law,"  "A  Valid  Religion  for  the 

Times,"  "The  Coming  Creed" 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net;  postpaid,  $1.63 

To  supply  concreteness  to  the  discussion  of  the  social  mission  of  the 
church  is  Parley  Paul  Womer's  purpose  in  The  Church  and  the  Labor 
Conflict.  Dr.  Womer  believes  that  in  dealing  with  the  relationship 
of  Christianity  to  industry  there  has  been  too  much  generalization, 
a  lack  of  definiteness  and  a  failure  to  grapple  the  fundamental  facts 
of  our  contemporary  social  and  economic  developments.  Accordingly 
he  does  not  approach  his  subject  by  the  usual  theorizing,  but  im- 
mediately gets  down  to  the  essentials — to  the  conditions  which  have 
brought  about  the  present  state  of  affairs  and  their  causes.  "While 
the  Christ  of  the  churches  is  scorned  and  rejected,"  he  says,  "the 
Nazarene  carpenter  is  enthusiastically  lauded  as  a  labor  leader  and 
revolutionist,  a  man  of  the  common  people  who  fought  hard  for  their 
moral  and  economic  welfare,  to  intents  and  purposes  the  first  socialist. 
Because  the  church  is  untrue  to  the  ideals  of  the  Nazarene,  say  these 
spokesmen  of  the  wage-earners,  it  is  looked  upon  with  suspicion  and 
hostility.  The  church  is  repudiated  not  because  it  is  Christian,  but 
precisely  because  it  is  not  Christian."  Accepting  this  as  a  statement 
of  fact,  what  should  the  church  do  to  regain  its  influence?  What 
should  be  its  attitude  to  labor  and  capital,  and  this  attitude  once 
defined,  what  will  be  the  final  effect  not  only  upon  the  church,  but 
upon  humanity  at  large?  These  are  some  of  the  all-absorbing  ques- 
tions to  which  the  author  devotes  himself. 

"The  author  outlines  very  clearly  the  social  mission  of  the  church 
in  overcoming  many  of  the  ills  of  society  in  its  present  state  of  unrest 
and  forecasts  the  new  church  and  its  future  work." — Boston  Globe. 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers         64-66  Fifth  Avenue         New  York 


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